Sweater Weather
by eighteenfortyone
Summary: Things don't change unless the people do. [For your missing dose of KevEdd]
1. One Throttle Cable

A shadow was casted upon him.

Kevin turned around and from the afternoon light shining outside, the silhoutte of a thin boy with dropping shoulders was seen. He squinted, now able to recognize a familiar obedient expression and benign persona. Kevin asked, "Just you?"

The silhoutte approached him, tightly gripping on his messenger bag strap as though it was a seat belt, and answered with a wavering voice, "I-I suppose. Ed and Eddy agreed to coincide at my home, and then we travel to you together, but they never appeared, so I concured that perhaps they-"

"It's alright," Kevin cut him off. The truth was that it wasn't alright. He just didn't want to keep hearing Edd's voice. "I just blew up when I found out you guys broke my ride and even though I said that I wanted all three of you to be here when I needed to fix it, I expected Eddy to bail."

The rusty haired teen reached for the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and pulled on it's chain, turning it on. Illuminating under the bulb was his babe, his one and only, his very first motorcycle. It was a was Heritage Softail Classic, a birthday present from his old man. It was Kevin's ticket to adulthood, the proof that he was now a man who had grown out of riding a bicycle with high handle bars and a cheap horn.

But under the light, the motocycle stayed still. It was broken from the inside and, as much as Kevin hated knowing that, it was lucky for Kevin because the last thing he wanted his dad to know was that he broke something so expensive.

"I-I, um... I send a myriad of apologies on behalf of Ed, Eddy, and myself." The sound of Edd's voice bounced around Kevin's garage walls until it echoed outside.

"Yeah. Whatever." Kevin walked over to the shelf, taking a toolbox and dragging it to his motorcycle. He dropped the toolbox on the ground, allowing its loud crash to make Edd jump from his stance, and then stared at his ride. He took his hat off, scratched his head, put the hat back on, and the tapped the bottom of his chin as he continued to observe.

Edd took several deep breaths to calm his nerves. When he realized that Kevin didn't seem like he was going to hurt him anytime soon, Edd took a step forward. He tilted his head as he analyzed Kevin, and then said, "Um... May offer some assistance?"

"No."

"But it seems as though you are unaware of what even is the main problem with your-"

"No."

"I don't see anything wrong with me becoming your succor for this single moment."

"What." Kevin turned around from observing his motorcycle to staring directly at Edd, unsure if what he heard Edd say was actually what Edd said. Edd gave a small smile. Kevin rose and eyebrow at the other boy. "Did you just offer to suck-"

"GOOD HEAVENS. NO." Now Edd cut off Kevin before he could finish what he was saying. Edd was now a crimson red and holding onto his black hat as though he was a tea kettle and it was come steaming off his head at any second. "I OFFERED- I WAS JUST- TO HELP YOU-"

"Alright, alright! I get it!" Once again turning around to face his motorcycle, Kevin threw both hands in the air in defeat. "I know what you meant! You can help. Sheesh. Just stop overreacting and overtalking to everything. That's the last thing I need right now."

Edd cleared his throat as he tried his best to return to a calmer state. He then stepped up next to Kevin, at first unsure if he was allowed to, but when he saw that the other boy was too focused on his motorcycle to even notice him, Edd planted both feet on the ground. He found himself copying Kevin's actions, tapping on his chin as he observed the motorcycle. Then he searched into his messenger bag, taking out a flashlight and magnifying glass. Kevin saw Edd pull out these items from the corner of his eye, and then found himself once again starting at him with a raised eyebrow.

"If I may," Edd allowed himself to step closer to the motorcycle and crouched down. He shined his flashlight and peered through his magnifying glass first at the handlebars, and then travelled down where he took an even closer look into the engine as much as he can without actually touching it.  
"I forget you liked to do mechanical stuff, too." Kevin muttered as he shoved both hands in his pocket.

"Tinkering, I'd like to call a hobby," Edd continued his search around the motorcycle. "If I remember, you were the one who spent much of his time making adjustments to his bicycle when we were younger."

"Yeah, well, that was a bike. I don't know about all... This." Kevin looked at the wall, beginning to feel embarrassed because he was obviously the inferior one here. He was now glad thaat Edd was too focused on his motorcycle because he knew how defeated he looked right now. "I don't even know what you and those dorks did to my bike- er, motorcycle. I just know that whatever you guys did, it'll cost me some repairs."

Edd stood up from where he was. He looked at Kevin with eyes that were trying to hold back pain as he defended his only friends, "I know that Ed and Eddy can do some actions that would seem rather... Malignant to you, but I tell you absolute truth when I tell you that they mean no harm." He cleared his throat and began to pat the dust off his shirt as he tried to change the tone in his voice back into a friendlier one. "But, um... Anyways." Edd turned off his flashlight and slipped it and his magnifying glass back into his back. "If it provides you any comfort, it appears that the only thing that 'those dorks' and I did was rip your throttle cable." Then he quickly added in a much quieter voice, "Though, I swear it was all Eddy."

The thing about Edd was that sometimes he used too many words to say a single message. kevin stared at him, trying to process everything he said, but when he realized he couldn't, he decided to ask a general question that didn't need any precedent information. "So what do I do?"

"Well, just your luck, I may have an extra, unused throttle cable somewhere within my home." Edd began to make his exit from the garage. "I will be right back. Do you have a socket set?" Kevin nodded. "Alright, you just grab that, and I will be back before you know it and we can fix your throttle cable in no time."

And Edd did keep to his word. Because within ten minutes, he did return to Kevin's garage with a new throttle cable in his hands. Edd closed the garage door behind him and then began to work with Kevin, teaching him how to properly replace the cable. Kevin used a wrench to remove the assembly from the handle bars and unhooked the cable from its housing. Edd did the unthreading himself because it was a difficult procedure with several obstructions in the way, but he still was able to talk Kevin through each step in case of any future accidents that Kevin had to deal with himself. When he finished, they worked on threading the new cable together and reassembly the motorcycle back, making sure that everything was straightened and adjusted before turning the motorcycle on and seeing if the cable pulled correctly.

"Choice." Kevin smirked as he turned his motorcycle off. He stepped off and then stood next to Edd, admiring their work. "I gotta say, you did some pretty fine work here, Double D."

"I believe you deserve some of your own acknowledgement, Kevin." Edd wiped the sweat off his forehead and smiled back at Kevin. He then took a glance at his watch. "Oh, my! It's already almost dinner time. I have to prepare for my parents' arrival."

Edd span on his heels around as he rushed to the garage door. He bent down to pick up the bottom with both hands, and then stood up straight to open it. But the problem was, it wouldn't budge. After another moment of struggling to open the garage door, Edd stood up straight, wiped the dirt off his clothes once more, and then faced Kevin with a nervous smile. "It appears that, um... Your garage door is fixed to the floor-"

"Dude. Did you break my garage?" Kevin walked over to Edd, rolling up his green sleeves, and then tried his best to pull the door up. But no matter how tightly he gripped on the handle and how much he flexed his muscles to pull it up, it wouldn't move. Kevin took off his hat, ran a hand through his hair, and then put his hat back on. He glared at Edd, but he was trying his best not to become infuriated with him. "You broke my garage door."  
"Th-there is a high possibility that it is just caught from the inside, perhaps if someone were to open it from the outside-"

"Great job, Master Tinker-er. What do we do now? We are stuck in my garage."

Edd began sinking into his own shirt as he slowly took as many steps away from Kevin as he could. Once he was away enough from any short-distance combat moves Kevin might be able to do to him, Edd frantically looked around for an escape. "Oh! There!" He pointed to the other door that led to the inside of Kevin's house and then made a dash for it. "We can enter your home and then I can leave through the front door!"

But to his dismay, that door was locked. Ed began to rattle the doorknob, not because he was trying his best to open it, but because he was becoming so scared that his hands were shaking violently. "D-d-don't you have your keys?" He asked as he looked back at Kevin. "C-can you u-unlock it?"

"No." Kevin pressed his back against the garage door and slid down to the floor until he was sitting down.

"D-do you happen to have a s-s-spare?"

"No. The spare key is taped under the windowsill in the front."

"What time do your parents come home?"

"They're working late today. They probably won't come home until tomorrow."

"M-maybe they will come home soon-"

Before Edd could finish his sentence, Kevin quicky shot up and began to pound on the garage door. The sound of the punches echoed within the garage and made Edd jump, trying to press himself against the wall and as far away from Kevin as possible.

"KEVIN, STOP THAT INCESSANT BEATING!" Edd began to yell at the top of his lungs as he pulled on his bag strap like a seat belt once more.  
Kevin turned around and looked at Edd with the colors in his eyes wildly swiming around. "WE. LIVE. IN. A. CUL-DE-SAC. SOMEBODY. OUT. THERE. WILL. HAVE. TO. HEAR. US. AND. THEN. GET. US. OUT."

He continued beating on the garage door for another good minute. But when he fists began to turn red and he realize that his attempts were fruitless, Kevin finally stopped. He turned around and stared back at Edd, who began to shake just from being looked at.

The two remained in their two separate areas in the garage, Kevin by the garage door to the outside and Edd by the garage door to the house. Silence remained, for fear that if Kevin said anything he would begin to take his rage out on Edd, and if Edd said anything he might just enrage Kevin to take his rage out on him anyways.

But after what seemed like hours, the first sound to break the silence appeared: the growl of a stomach. Kevin stared at Edd. Edd gave a nervous smile.

They tried to ignore it. But then it growled again.

Kevin gave a heavy sigh. He began to walk to the one of the walls, making Edd press his back even more into his wall. But Kevin, instead of going towards Edd, approached one of the shelves and looked through the boxes. He pulled out an ice chest, placed it on one of the tables, and then opened it. He took out a can and threw it at Edd.

Edd, with little to no athletic ability, almost dropped the can but managed to catch it before it hit the ground. He held the can before him and his eyes widened as he read the title. "A- But- Kevin! This is alcohol! This- This is illegal- we couldn't possibly-"

The sound of a can opening stopped Edd in his words. Kevin held his own can, brought it to his lips and took a sip, and then rose the can to Edd. "Double dude, you're hungry. We're stuck in a garage. This is all we got."

"But- But still. Alcohol is just empty calories- it- it wouldn't fill me up anyways."

Kevin stared at Edd with dark eyes. "Just. Drink."

At command, Edd opened his can and drank. He gagged at the taste of it, but covered his mouth to make sure he would drink it and not spill it all over Kevin's garage floor.

Kevin rose an eyebrow at Edd, and then laughed. "This is going to be a fun night."


	2. Two Egg Salad Sandwiches

Edd woke up to darkness.

He took the pillow off his face and then wrapped his arms around himself as he felt the cold air embrace his... Bare self?

Edd quickly shot up, standing on both feet on his bed, finding that he was wearing nothing but his hat and his underwear. What was going on?

Perhaps waking up in the odd position of his pillow on his face instead of his head on the pillow should have been the first sign that something was wrong. Both hands reached for either side of his hat as he tugged it down to cover his ears and he scurried off his bed to his closet where he grabbed which ever robe he can grab first, not even paying attention to what the label indicating which day the robe should be worn. Did he even know what day it was?

With each step he took out of his bedroom and down the stairs, it felt like the step was being taken on his brain. There was an incessant pounding in his head. Was it to each breath he took? To each heartbeat? Or was it to the sound of each fist to a garage door..?

That was the last thing he remembered. He was in Kevin's garage, fixing on his motorcycle, and then they were locked in there with alcohol and a lingering conversation that was very slowly returning back to Edd. There was too many questions Edd was asking himself even though he clearly did not know the answer to. Maybe his parents would know.

He rushed to the kitchen, the promise land of where he can locate his parents in the morning. But instead of his mother by the sink and his father drinking a cup of coffee at the table, Edd was, what should have been obviously expected, greeted by a sticky note. Edd picked up the note and read it to himself:

"_Eddward,_

_It appears as though the throttle cable in the family car has broken and the spare throttle cable is missing. Your father and I have travelled downtown to hire a repairman for our troubles. I am sorry I cannot be here to greet you a 'good morning'!_

_But instead, I have made you a delicious egg salad sandwich for lunch today, and an extra for you to bring to your friend, Kevin. Please make sure to deliver him this extra lunch and return his clothes to him when you see him in school today. His clothes should be folded neatly on the dryer._

_Mo_m."

When Edd finished scanning the note, his eyes widened. There was school today?

* * *

There is nothing worse than ruining the perfect attendance you've been holding since the beginning of your school career than with a tardy to your first class of the day. Edd entered the classroom with his head hanging low and trying to not make himself noticeable to the teacher. He sat in his seat in the front, slump with his head lowered then his shoulders, and slowly sinking to the bottom. He expected a lecture, a speech that would put him in blast in front of the class like the teacher usually does when other students came late, but oddly, the teacher didn't. The teacher took one glance at Edd, then continued with his lesson.

Edd looked to his right and left. Ed appeared too busy doodling another unrealistic monster into his desk and Eddy turned his head out the window as soon as he saw Edd looking at him.

There was something extremely off about the day.

But Edd didn't find out what was wrong until lunchtime. When that final bell indicating that class was over and lunch was beginning, Edd gathered all of his things into his bag. Even though Edd was usually the first to enter the classroom and the last to leave, everyone seemed to have rushed out of the classrom even faster today- even Ed and Eddy.

"I suppose the silent treatment I'm receiving today indicates a silent lunch as well." Edd muttered. He grabbed onto his lunchbag, and then remembered that he had the extra lunchbag for Kevin he had to deliver. Perhaps lunchtime wouldn't be so alone.

If Edd remembered clearly, he would most likely find Kevin eating lunch with the rest of the jocks and cheerleaders. The probability of Edd recognizing anyone from that group would be two out of the total amount of students there, the two being Kevin and Naz. The probability of an awkward exchange would be extremely high.

He walked down the hall, receiving a strange aura from the people around him. They would glance at him, making sure that their bodies weren't directed toward him, but they were still able to stare at him from the corners of their eyes. Edd tried to smile at some of the people he recognized, but that caused them to only completely turn away from him.

When he finally reached the cafeteria and the center table where most of the popular kids hung out and had a view of everything, Edd took a deep breath. He saw Kevin there, sitting beside another red haired athlete and a shorter, blonde one, and then began to approach him. But as soon as Ed took one step, the sound caused most everyone to turn and look in his direction and become completely silent, like animals getting caught by a predator, or rather, spotting their prey.

Edd cleared his throat. He continued to walk up to the group who separated for him like the red sea. Kevin remained sitting in his seat and stared up at Edd.

"Um... Salutations!" Edd greeted with a familiar nervous smile. "I just came to deliver this meal that my mother wanted me to transfer to use as a form of gratitude for what you... Did." He paused when he realized that he wasn't even sure of what Kevin did. Edd cleared his throat again, finding it get dryer and dryer, and then took our Kevin's neatly folded clothes out from his bag and also handed it to the other boy. "Here are your clothes, as well. Um, do not worry! For they have been properly cleaned to immaculate state from whatever stains or contaminations may have gotten on it."  
There was a strange silence.

Kevin looked at the lunch and his clothes in Edd's hands, and then back at Edd. Even though both were only paying attention to each other, they could feel that almost everyone else around them was staring at them as well.

"Thanks." Kevin took his clothes and the lunch from Edd. He turned back to his friends to continue their previous conversation, until Edd interrupted again.

"Um, it's an egg salad sandwich!" He proudly said, but then after saying it, he felt himself slowly sink back into where he was standing like a turtle retreating back to his shell. Edd found himself wanting to at least eat lunch with someone, with Kevin, but he was observant enough to realize that he most likely wouldn't. His voice shrank as he added, "My... My mother makes a fantastic egg salad sandwich."

Kevin looked at Edd. He listened to what he said. But instead of replying, he just nodded.

Edd nodded back. A signal that the conversation was over.

The thin boy turned around on his heels, and began to walk out of the cafeteria. The silence followed him all the way outside, and the normal conversation within the cafeteria didn't return until it was absolute that Edd was gone. He knew because he could hear everyone's voices once more as soon as he closed the door behind him.

The day had already started off awful, and the pounding that still remained in his head just reminded him of how much he needed to figure out what happened to make everything so awful. And after that small event in the cafeteria, Edd couldn't help but feel that the pounding in his head was now accompanied by an emptiness in his chest.

If there wasn't anyone who was willing to eat with him, then that just meant that he was going to have to eat alone. Edd tried his best to not let this bring himself down. Perhaps there would be other students in the ASB room who would be willing to eat lunch with him. Yeah. They would be great people to eat lunch with.

Edd decided to make a stop by his locker to drop off some books before he went to the ASB room. But as he came closer to his locker, he began to realize that there were people in front of his locker. What was going on?

There was a group of students holding out their cell phones and taking pictures, while administrators tried their best to push them away and allow the janitors to continue cleaning. Edd pushed through the crowd as best as he could, but found that as soon as the student saw who's hand was on their shoulder, they quickly walked away. "Excuse me," Edd would say politely. "Excuse me, I am the current owner of this locker. May I please be able to reach my locker?"

When the crowd had dispersed all around and the only thing blocking Edd from his locker was the old janitor using a dirty rag to clean his locker door, all cell phones stopped taking pictures and switched to video to record the single moment in Peach Creek history that could either entertain the heartless, or make one lose heart.

As Edd's eyes read the words on his locker, the red paint burning into his wide eyes, the single word would forever taste like poison on his tongue as it escaped through his small-gapped teeth and now chapped lips:

"Fag."

And it was at that moment when that pounding in Edd's head, that emptiness in his chest, the hunger from within his stomach finally had their encore performance of him throwing up right there in front of everybody.


	3. Three Knocks on a Front Door

The day was already reaching nighttime, but winter clouds blocked the setting sun from casting shadows long across the cul-de-sac driveways.

Kevin didn't need to ride his motorcycle to stop by Edd's house, but he found it difficult to walk those few yards. After that scene that happened in school, at the cafeteria and what word spread around about Edd puking his insides out in front of his locker, there was no way Kevin could face Edd again.

But he was and there was nothing he could do about it. Everything inside of him was telling him that he had to see Edd, to see how he was doing and, more importantly, return the tupperware that held the egg salad sandwich he ended up eating during lunch.

He stood in front of the door, not even directly in front of the door, but in front of the door mat in front of the door. This was always the problem for Kevin, always being known as the macho man, the jock, the guy who acts so big and can do anything. But the truth was that even though he appreciated living with the labels, he was never the one to act first. He wasn't smart enough to know what to say first, to know what to do first. He always needed to push before he can gain the confidence (or most of the time, anger) to actually do it.

Kevin nervously tapped the plastic lid of the tupperware with his fingers, gradually losing in his own debate of simply knocking on the door or not.

He reached over the door mat and rapped his knuckles on the door.

No reply.

He knocked again.

No reply.

He knock again.

When it seemed like there was no reply and Kevin's impatience was going to push him to knock again, the door knob twisted and then opened. On the other side was Edd, dramatically draped in a large robe with and surgical mask over his face and a cooling pad on his forehead.

Kevin stared at the other boy. "Whoa."

Because of his protective attire, the only thing of Edd that Kevin could really see was his eyes and from what Kevin could see, Edd's eyes were squinting with irritation. Edd cleared his throat, trying his best to not sound angry. "What do you want, Kevin?"

"I just-" Kevin lifted the tupperware higher to direct Edd's attention to it, but Kevin just couldn't keep his attention away from Edd.

"Dude." His words puffed out of a crooked smile into breaths that floated in the winter air. "You are like... The worst hangover I've ever seen."

Edd's eyes stared at Kevin with contempt. "Well, I'm glad that one of us is finding enjoyment in this." He grabbed the tupperware out of Kevin's hands. "I wish you well for the rest of your evening." Edd placed a hand on the door knob and began pulling on the door. "If you find that you are beginning to have a bad day, just imagine standing at my front door, laughing at my poor state as I crawl back to my self-quarantine now-"

"Hey now. Wait. Hold up."

Kevin grabbed the door. It didn't even take much effort, but he stopped Edd from closing the front door. He pulled the door in his direction to make sure that Edd could see him. "Look, uhh..." The athlete's eyes began to wander everywhere except at Edd, as though the words he wanted to say were somewhere hidden in their surroundings. He knew what he wanted to say, but he, being the dumb macho man he was labeled to be, didn't know how to say it.

And then he looked Edd. And then he knew what he had to say.

"I'm, uh... Sorry about what you had to see on your locker today." He could feel his throat begin to dry up. "If I could beat up the guys who did that to you, you know I would."

Edd wasn't sure what to say. Although most of his face was covered, the small silence between them indicated how long Edd needed to observe how sincere these words that Kevin was saying were.  
They seemed pretty sincere.

"Thanks, Kevin." Edd's eyes smiled at him. He began to pry Kevin's fingers off from the door as he tried his best to close it again.

But Kevin kept a tight grip and actually opened the door even further from the amount Edd got it closed. "Also, uhh," Kevin managed to stumble out of his mouth. "Your egg salad sandwich was delicious- err, your mom's egg salad was delicious. I mean, fantastic. Just like you said. Yeah."

Edd was beginning to be glad that he had the surgical mask on because if it wasn't, he was sure that Kevin would be able to see the smile on his face slowly fading away. He repeated once more, "Thanks, Kevin" and attempted once more to close the front door.

Kevin opened it again. "Uhh... And tell your mom I said thanks."

"Absolutely, Kevin."

"And that my clothes smell really nice now."

"Of course, Kevin."

"And that... Yeah."

"Kevin, I think I'm going to vomit again."

Kevin let go of the door as soon as Edd said that. He scratched the back of his head and bashfully smiled. "Oh, yeah. Dude. You probably have to. Uhh... Yeah. You should go to your bathroom and uhh... Throw up or something."

Edd looked at Kevin with eyes of uncertainty. And then he finally closed his front door.

As soon as the front door closed and Kevin could hear Edd's footsteps scurrying to the kitchen tiles, Kevin turned around and began to mentally beat himself for realizing how stupid he sounded. Sure one could argue that he always sounded stupid, but he just realized that while having a conversation with Edd, Edd who was so smart, how stupid he sounded was incredibly emphasized. If any of that even made sense. Because right now, nothing was to Kevin.

He began to walk back to his house, seeing at that was really the only thing left for him to do. Maybe he'd go take a shower. Or take a ride around the city on his motorcycle.

When he got to his house, he walked up his driveway, unlocked his garage and opened the door, expecting to see his motorcycle there safely waiting for him.

But what he found instead was a blue haired vixen sitting on his motorcycle with one hand on the handle and the other caressing the engine. "_Do you wanna touch, yeah_," she sang to herself with each stroke. "_Do you wanna touch, yeah_," her fingers carefully trailed around each contour and curve. "_Do you wanna touch me there_"

Kevin took a step back, shocked to find one of the Kanker sisters there in his home. "What are you doing here?"

"_Where_," she purred.

He was about to answer her when he barely realized that she was still singing. Kevin repeated, "Seriously? What are you doing here? I can call the cops on you for-" he looked left and right and found them oddly alone. But oddly enough, knowing that it was just one Kanker and not all three made him feel safer. "It's just you? Where are your sisters-"

"A V-twin, chrome exhausts with dual mufflers." Marie sat up straight on his motorcycle and turned her body to face him. She crosed her legs and flipped her hair, even though her bangs still managed to cover one of her eyes. She lifted her chin up and smiled playfully at Kevin. "You've got a pretty good engine on you, Kevvy. You wanna let met ride you one of these days?"

Kevin closed his garage door to make sure that if anyone was outside, they wouldn't see that he was actually having a conversation with a Kanker. "Quit it, Marie. What do you want?"

Marie hopped off his motorcycle and began to walk closer to Kevin, one foot in front of the other. "Oh, well... You know." With each step she took, Kevin took a step back. "Just wandering around, looking out for my boyfriend and how people think it's fun calling him a fag and what not." Kevin felt his back press against his garage door. Her voice suddenly dropped with a growl. "And I know that you had something to do with it. And even worse," Marie rose a fist and punched the space next to his face. "I know that you're using this to get closer to him."

There was a long pause where Kevin could feel Marie's eyes staring down at him like lasers.

He then asked, "How do you know?"

She laughed. "Because, honey," Marie lifted her fist off the door, kissed the end of her middle finger, and then pressed it against Kevin's lips. "You and I are a lot more alike than you think."

Marie placed both hands on Kevin's shoulders and moved him to her side. "I am never sharing my boyfriend with anyone because, trust me," she bent down, grabbed the bottom of the garage door, and made a show as she pulled it back up. "You don't like me when I'm jealous."

She began to walk out onto Kevin's driveway, disappearing into the arriving darkness. Without even looking back, she rose one hand in the air and flicked her wrist in a wave goodbye. "Consider this my manifesto."

Kevin watched as she kept walking, the street lamps bouncing off her outline as it swayed back and forth like a pendulum When he was sure she was gone and away from his house, Kevin turned around and looked at his motorcycle.

"I need to wash you."


	4. Four Clues Solved

At first Edd thought that only one person appeared behind him because of the tall shadow that completely enveloped his, but when his eyes lowered, he was able to sense that there was another person when he recognized another.

It didn't take over a decade of friendship and the (regretfully, yet inevitable, developed) ability to recognize the scent of old, musky shaving cream and the scent of a strange sulfuric mixture with fliud excreted by a dog's anal glands that aged over time. Edd took his books out of his locker and then closed it before turning around to face his friends.

Ed still stood tall, even though his eye level meant staring past the tip of hair strands sticking up from the heads of most everyone around him. He used an entire arm to wave to Edd. "Hi, Double D."

"My, isn't it so pleasing to have your friends since childhood finally speaking to you again after being degraded and downtrodden by the vandalism left behind by some loving, unidentified peers," Edd greeted sarcastically.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever," Eddy swatted a hand in the air as though Edd's words were a swarm of pests. "You're a fag, we all know already-"

"Excuse me? You haven't even heard my standpoint on the issue and you're already agreeing with-"

"What standpoint do you have?"

Edd couldn't help but actually think. What standpoint did he have? Ever since his locker had been tagged, he never even given any thought as to who did, or what would even motivate the person to do it. What had he even done recently to stimulate such an action?

"Yeah, that's right. You don't have any standpoint because there's no point of having one!" Everything Eddy said always came out as condescending without him even realizing it and after these few days of not speaking to his friends, Edd was beginning to realize how much it hurt. Before Edd could say another word, Eddy cut him off. "There's no point of having one because you, our dearest Eddward, are getting asked out to Winter Formal!"

Edd's mouth opened in surprise, but he closed it when logical thinking and, well, bashfulness began to flood his thoughts. "What? No." The boy straightened the collars on his shirt and adjusted the hat on his head. Winter Formal wasn't even until a few more weeks and he could have sworn that students were barely beginning to start their dance proposals a couple days ago. "Why would- No. No one would ever ask me out to Winter Formal."

"But why not, Double D?" Ed wrapped his arms around Edd and pushed his weight down on the smaller boy. "Everybody wants to dance with you at the Winter Formal."

"Yeah, Double D. Everybody wants to dance with you at Winter Formal" Eddy grabbed Edd by his messenger bag strap and began dragging the two of them to their first period. "But you're only one person, so if whoever's asking you has some friends, some hot friends, you can tell them that you have some friends and then everyone's friends can dance with each other. Whaddaya say you help out some friends, Double D?"

By the time they entered their first period classroom, Edd could have sworn he almost saw the light. As much as he loved Ed and his benign personality, there was only so much weight and stench that Edd could handle.

Eddy shoved Ed off Edd and then, using Edd's messenger bag strap, swung him to his desk. Edd hit it, almost toppling over the gift on top of it.

Edd quickly used both hands to grab the metal frame that was resting on his desk, catching it right before it fell. He held the metal frame up and before his face, now watching as the suspended metal balls attached to the frame began to move, the one on the end hitting the three in the middle, but only the ball hanging on the other end moving. With each swing and small clash of metal hitting each time, a smile of Edd's face stretched as his face lit up.

"Oh, my," He was completely mesmerized, not only by the device in his hands, but by the thought that someone would even consider giving it to him. "It appears- it appears that someone must have left Newton's cradle on my desk as an endowment!"

"I don't get it." Eddy scratched his head in confusion. "She must be really stupid. This isn't a Winter Formal proposal. The word getting around the school is wrong. And stupid. Like the girl who left this here."

While Eddy continued having his conversation with himself, Ed watched as Edd floated to his seat, slowly sitting down as he neatly placed the Newton's cradle in the middle of his desk. Ed smiled widely at the sight of his friend so happy.

"It doesn't make any sense!" Eddy was getting more and more frustrated as he continued pacing back and forth in front of Edd's desk. "Oh. Oh... OH." He stopped in the middle of his words and dramatically slammed both hands on Edd's desk, causing the Newton's cradle to be misplaced from its center location. "That's because it's not a girl! It's a guy!" Eddy was applauding at his own proposal as he continued bursting out loud with this new self-proclaimed clarity. "Because you're a fag, Edd! It had to be an idiot to give you this thing! Of course, another fag had to do it. Cause you guys don't know how to do a proper Winter Formal proposal!"

Edd's eyes widened as he heard each offensive saying come out of Eddy's mouth. "Eddy!" He scooted back in his seat and stood up, also pressing both hands on his desk, to become eye level with Eddy and give him a piece of his mind. "I've never heard such... Such... Derogatory patois before!"

"Hey!" Eddy rose his voice louder against Edd's usually, softer didactic tone. "I don't care if you're my friend, you ain't patting nothing of mine!"

From the moment that Edd stood up from his seat, a note slipped out from within his desk. Ed was the only one to notice. Ignoring the argument between his friends, Ed picked up the note and took moment to recognize the words that the scratched on letters formed.

"Patois!" Edd shouted, feeling his own vocal chords stretching from his yells. "I said 'patois'!

"Well, pat on this, you fa-"

Before Eddy could even begin to do whatever he was going to threaten to do, Ed began to read the note out loud, slowly and surely: "What was... The sea.. Son that Isaac Newton was... Born?"

Both the attentions of Edd and Eddy were now directed at Ed as they stared at him, dumbfounded. "Let me see that," Eddy snatched the note out of Ed's hands as he read the note out loud, once more. "What was the season that Isaac Newton was born?"

"Why, that is a simple question." Edd remarked, suddenly happier at the mention of Isaac Newton. "Sir Isaac Newton was born prematurely on December 25, 1642, therefore making him born in the season of winter."

Ed and Eddy stared at Edd for a long moment.

"Yeah. Like I said, " Eddy tossed the note on Edd's desk. "The girl asking you out must be really dumb cause none of this is making any sense."

The bell rang and Ed and Eddy walked over to their desks, as with the rest of the students in their class. Edd remained in his seat, staring at his Newton's cradle with the single thought of "Winter" in his mind.

* * *

The Newton's cradle and note wasn't the only thing that was left for Edd. When he went to his locker during the break, he opened the door and found a black bowtie ontop another note that said, "_How should you dress when you win the Nobel Peace Prize?_" And when he entered his third period, lying on his desk was a box with a small, stuffed cat inside of it. Taped onto the cat's collar was another note that said, _"The mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony _ each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase._"

Edd was now entering his fourth period with Ed by his side. Ed couldn't help but smile as he watched Edd struggle to balance all of the things he'd been receiving that day. "You are very loved, Double D." Ed stated the obvious. "Double D, you are very loved."

"My, Ed!" Edd couldn't help but sound proud of his friend. "That was a very well-said antimetabole. If you spoke anymore poetry, I'd have to correct myself and say chiasmus!"

Rushing into the classroom was Ed, eyes gleaming with news he needed to burst out. "I KNOW THE IDIOT WHO DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO DO WINTER FORMAL PROPOSALS!" He shouted as he pushed past Ed and Edd, almost causing Edd to drop everything in his arms. Eddy jumped up and down from his spot, trying to gain the attention that was already being focused on him. "I KNOW WHO THE IDIOT IS!"

"Eddy, I don't appreciate you referring to them as an idiot." Edd was already growing an attraction to who ever the mysterious gift/note giver was. "I find this mystery they have given me to be... Well, incredibly invigorating. They clearly put a lot of effort in this proposal and deserve much credit for their work."

"Fine. If you wanna give credit to the idiot, then get ready to give it to them because I know the person's who's behind all this..."

There was a suspenseful silence as Ed and Edd stared at Eddy, awaiting for the name.

The corners of Eddy's mouth curled into a chesire grin as he said the name slowly: "Marie."

"M-M-Marie?" Edd repeated as he began to stammer in his words. "M-Marie? R-really? Sh-she couldn't possibly."

"It's all true, Double D." Eddy stood up straight and placed his right hand in the air, showing that he was speaking in scout's code. "My very own ears heard the word spreading around school. She was actually seen at school today, and she was holding a bunch of roses, I think, and she's got a little something prepared for you during lunch."

"W-well... Th-this-s is a-all s-so s-sweet of her." Edd gulped as flashes of scarred childhood memories of physical, sexual, and mental harassment from Marie flashed through his mind.

The bell rang and all the students quickly moved to their seats before the teacher could call them out for being tardy. Sitting on Edd's desk was a toy chemistry set that was designed for little children. Taped onto the set was the final note:

"_Starts with Hg, but rhymes with iron._

_?_

_Stop by your locker during lunch to finalize your answer_."

The teacher began lecturing on the topic of history, but Edd was actually focused on something that wasn't learning. He stared at the clues before him: Newton's Cradle, the black bow tie, the box with the stuffed cat inside, and now the toy chemistry set.

Was it really Marie Kanker behind all of this?

The note with Newton's Cradle asked, "_What was the season that Isaac Newton was born?_" Edd had already answered the question with, "Winter." The note after that one asked, "_How should you dress when you win the Nobel Peace Prize?_" That note was taped onto a black bowtie. Edd found the answer to that question very easily: "Formal." When he opened the box and found the stuffed cat inside, the entire image already made him think of Erwin Schrodinger. The note that was taped onto the cat's collar was one of Schrodinger's very own quotes, but it was missing one word. Even though Edd already knew that quote from the top of his head, context clues made him understand that the missing word was "With." He was now staring at the toy chemistry set. The only clue that had been given on the note was, "_Starts with Hg, but rhymes with iron_." Edd closed his eyes and thought about the periodic table of elements. Hg was the sign for mercury, which started with the letter of 'm'. Iron on the periodic table was represented as Fe, which if read aloud, would be pronounced with the long 'e' sound. The final clue was the word, "Me."

"_Winter_." "_Formal_." "_With_." "_Me_."

Edd stared at the large question mark in the middle of the last note. And then reread the final direction at the bottom.

Was it really Marie Kanker behind all of this?

* * *

Outside, during lunchtime, snow began to lightly fall on the ground. There was no one outside, or at least, no one stood out in the white blanket that covered everything.

Marie covered her mouth with both hands as she breathed warm air into them. The only thing warming her was the thin hoodie that she and her sisters thrifted last weekend and even though it did a poor job of what it was manufactured to do, she thought she looked cute in it and that's all that mattered.

Perhaps this was all a bad idea. She was sitting in the middle of the bleachers by the track with an old blanket spread over the cold metal seats to make sure that the food she brought wouldn't freeze over so quickly. She spent the night before preparing this entire meal, a meal for two, with candle lights and everything (even though the falling snow was slowly piling over the food and causing the candle to blow out with each gust of snow). All in all, it was a winter picnic, something so strange and obscure and unique and quirky that she thought that he, of all people, would appreciate and enjoy. Especially from a person like her.

But moments passed and it was still only her.

She wrapped her arms around herself, beginning to shiver. Marie turned around at the sound of footsteps approaching below the bleachers.

"Hey, Marie!" A familiar, raspy voice called out.

Marie groaned. She stood up, ran to the edge of the bleachers, gripping tightly on the railings as she shouted back, "WHAT DO YOU WANT, LEE?"

On the ground were her sisters, also bundled up in clothes purchased in the nearby thrift store. Lee held her arms above her head, protecting her precious curls from the falling snow. Beside her was a jubilant May with a hat covering her long, blonde hair as she bounced with each step she took, enjoying as her feet sunk down each time.

May and Lee climbed to the top of the bleachers until they were on the same level as Marie. "Hey, Marie. I think you should quit all this," Lee bluntly said as she began to pick the dirt out of her nails. "This is all, you know. Stupid."

"IT IS NOT." Marie practically roared out, shaking the bleachers as she stomped. "Where is he?" She looked around violently, her blue hair whipping back and forth each time she turned her head. "All you guys had to do was make sure he got the note!"

"He's not coming." May said as she pulled on the strings of her jacket.

"What." Marie stopped looking around, and slowly turned to face her sisters. "What did you say?"

May lowered her head as she nervously repeated, "He's not coming."

Marie began to rush towards May with hands ready to wrap around her throat. "YOU HAD ONE JOB."

"Hey, cool it, Marie." Lee stood between them and punched Marie in the stomach before she can even touch May. "We did put the note in his locker. But he's not comin'. Someone else has been doing this whole asking out thing before you this entire time, so your note got removed. First come, first serve."

Marie coughed out the pain she felt in her stomach. "But... But..." She wiped her mouth as she could feel her lip begin to tremble. "But who could..."

Even before she finished asking the question out loud, Marie knew the answer.

She looked up with a new fire in her eyes that began to melt the snow around her. Marie rolled up the sleeves of her jacket and began marching down the bleacher steps. "May, Lee," she growled. Lee smirked at the sound of her sister's new rage, knowing that there was going to be an opportunity of ruining something coming up.

"There's a motorcycle in the parking lot waiting for a wreckin'."

"Awwwwwww," May pouted as she stared at the untouched picnic food. "Can't we eat something before we do that?"

* * *

Edd took a deep breath.

In his arms was the box with the stuffed cat, wearing the black bow tie, and the toy chemistry set inside. Balancing on top of the box was the Newton's cradle. On either side of him was Ed and Eddy, walking towards his locker to reveal who was the mysterious sender and to reveal Edd's answer to their question.

He turned the corner and was arriving closer and closer to his locker, the crowds of students staring at him once more as he passed and growing larger and larger and he approached his locker. In front of his locker was a large crowd, similar to the crowd that was in front of his locker when he found the vandalism on it.

Edd gulped.

The crowd turned and looked over their shoulders, almost in a cascading effect, and once they say Edd, they began to move away from his locker. As the crowd moved away from his locker, like curtains opening to a show, a murmur started to spread. The sound grew louder and louder, until a familiar voice finally shouted:

"SHUT UP."

The sound started to fall into a decrescendo.

"SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!"

The mass of people began to pull away.

"HOW AM I SUPPOSE TO ASK EDD TO WINTER FORMAL IF YOU'RE ALL IN MY WAY."

And then there, in front of his locker, was the brash, yet extremely conventional, athlete who held roses in his hands that were as red as the trademark hat he wore on his yet.

Even though Edd was trying his best not to destroy the gifts and clues that were left for him, he felt the air escape his lungs as his muscles tightened and he dropped the box he was holding all day, creating a huge crash as the sound of the cat wearing the black bow tie and the toy chemistry set and the Newton's cradle hit the tiled hallways floor.

A Johnny, who was still irregular and irrelevantly placed as ever, placed an ear next to Plank. "What's that, buddy?" His voice cracked as he translated what he heard. "Kevin made Double D's balls drop?!"


	5. Five Songs Sung

The rising sun was reflecting off the snow in an eerie, incandescent glow- or, at least, it just looked weird to Kevin who cannot recall the last time he woke up this early on a Winter Break.

He pulled on the collar of his crew neck sweater, a tacky knitted pattern that was just received in the mail from a lonely grandma with all the time in the world in her Florida retirement home. Although it was slightly itchy, Kevin couldn't help but admit that it was warm and that he managed to make even tacky look cool.

It was the first Sunday of the two week Winter Break that the school promised for all the students. Even though everyone preferred to spend their Sunday morning sleeping in, let alone the first Sunday morning of their Winter Break, Kevin knew that this was no time for sleeping in.

The boy trudged through the snow as he silently cursed all the cul-de-sac residents for not shoveling the snow out of their driveways and sidewalks yet (even though his own family was also guilty of this on several occassions.) He felt the stare of a judgemental pair of eyes pressing against him as he walked, but when he turned, there wasn't a single movement around him. Of course, everyone else was sleeping in. Why would anybody even be watching him?

Kevin stood in front of Edd's door and knocked. When he realized he was stepping on the doormat, he quickly took a step back and respectfully waited on the snow.

The front door opened and Kevin could feel the heated indoor air rush out and warm his cold cheeks. "Oh... Good morning, Kevin," a suddenly now nervous Edd was who answered the door. "Um... Good-bye, Kevin."

Edd tried to close the door as quickly as he could, but as the previous time he found Kevin at his front door, Kevin was even quicker and was able to prevent Edd from closing it.

"Hey, wait. Hold up." Kevin woke up early on a Sunday morning and he was determined to spend it how he wanted to. "Are your parents home?"

"No, they left a note saying that they were... Out."

"Can I come in?"

"I'd prefer you not to-"

"I promise not to bug you about Winter Formal, even though it'd be nice to at least talk about it instead of seeing you run away again, like you did after I asked you in front of everybody at school."

The reason why Edd had been avoiding Kevin since his dance proposal was honestly just because Edd didn't know what his answer was. He didn't understand why Kevin, of all people, would ask him to a dance and risk his own reputation at school. And then there was still the problem of not knowing who was th eone who tagged his locker. Did Kevin know something about that? Why didn't anyone else tag Kevin's locker after seeing him ask Edd to the dance? Was he behind it? There was too many questions and not knowing the answer to any question always made Edd uncomfortable. "I apologize for that, but I just need some more time to gather my thoughts and consider several factors, such as-"

"It's been a week and two days since I asked you."

Edd paused. "I recall you stating that you wouldn't badger me about it."

"Can I come in? I think Jimmy's staring at me from his bedroom window again."

"Why would you suspect Jimmy of even doing-"

"Do you want to go watch a movie with me sometime?"

"I didn't exactly plan on leaving my house today-"

"That's fine. We can watch some movies inside."

Kevin opened the front door all the way and made his way inside past Edd. He entered the living room, dropping his bag on the floor and making himself at home on the couch. When he found the sitting position he was most comfortable with, which was really half sitting and half sprawled limbs across the couch, he reached into his bag and began taking out cases of DVDs. "I brought movies like 'Robocop' and my personal favorite, 'Hot Rod', but I know you probably aren't into that stuff, so I also brought others like 'Inception' and 'Gattaca' to widen our range of movies." The stacks of DVDs was beginning to almost topple over the edge of the coffee table. "But I really wanted to make you watch 'Ironman' with me, both one and two, because you really remind me of him."

Edd had heaved a heavy sigh when Kevin made his way inside, knowing that it was now going to be impossible to remove the other boy from his house. He had followed after Kevin into the living room, inspecting the floor for any dirt that might have been trailed behind. At the mention of movie titles, Edd was trying to think of ways to ask Kevin to leave. But at the mention of Ironman, Edd was beginning to think of how complimenting of a comparison that was. "Ironman?" Edd repeating, recalling the billionaire playboy genius that buit his own super suit and discovered a new element. "I remind you of Ironman?"

"No." Kevin immediately corrected. "Of JARVIS."

Edd shook the kinder thoughts out of his head and stared at Kevin dumbfounded. But the snicker and small smirk on Kevin's face told him he meant it as a joke.

"I'm just kidding," Kevin laughed at Edd's expression, then mumble ever so quietly to himself, "Not really." He caught the toppling tower of DVDs and separated them into two stable stacks on the table. Kevin stood up, waiting for Edd to come by him on the couch. But Edd remained standing where he was.

Like an obedient dog who just realized he did something wrong, Keving became anxious. "Whoa. What... What am I doing?" He looked at Edd as though he just woke up from sleepwalking. He then looked left and right for an escape. "I just... Sorry, Double D. I just ran in here, you didn't even want me here in the first place, huh? Sorry for just going in like this, I just, I don't know, you were probably doing something, and then I just-"

"No, no! It's fine, Kevin!" Edd lifted both hands to try and calm Kevin. Although what Kevin was saying was true, the even bigger truth was that this was the first time Edd has ever seen Kevin act so apprehensive and really, what else do you do with a nervous Kevin? "I was just- I just finished doing chores, and then I was going to begin working on some assignments that are due when we return to school. I-it's fine if you're here. Really."

Kevin stared at Edd, waiting for some sign of assurance.

Confused, all Edd was left to do was nod his head.

"Alright, cool." Kevin stuffed both hands into his jean pockets.

The two began to enter another impasse before Edd suddenly suggested, "How about I go to the kitchen and brew us some tea- or even better yet, some hot chocolate?"

"Sounds like a good idea," Kevin agreed. He then looked around and added, "And I'll go to the bathroom," so as to not be left alone doing nothing in the living room. "Where's your bathroom?"

Edd smiled. "You will be able to find the restroom just down that hall, first door to your left."

Kevin walked in the direction that Edd indicated and heard Edd's footsteps only start to walk to the kitchen when Kevin entered the hallway. Because he didn't actually need to use the bathroom, Kevin treated the walk there like a tour. And the tourist attraction? As he looked around, he was beginning to think that there wasn't any.

Most home usually decorate the walls with family photos, frames of children during their school's Picture Day when they looked their best, captured childhood memories. But the hallway Kevin was walking through was almost empty with only a single photo of what he guessed to be the sun setting in Hawaii. It was actually a photo of the sun rising in Cambodia.

He went to the door on the left, just as Edd instructed, and as he put his hand on the knob, Kevin couldn't help but notice the door next to it. He figured that since he had already welcomed himself into Edd's house, it wouldn't matter welcoming himself into the rest of the parts of his home.

Kevin entered the room next to the bathroom, finding himself now lost in a sea of musical instruments. All around him were instruments, varying from drums and guitars, all instruments that Kevin could recognize, to other musical devices he's never seen before and that looked as though somebody decided to just put wood and strings and metal together and say it makes music. They were neatly aligned as though they were on display in a museum with an ordered walkway that gave him space to explore the room. He walked to the far off corner of the room to where the piano was, a polished, ebony glory that glowed under the ceiling lights. He sat down on the piano stool and continued to look around. He wondered why after all this time, he never knew that there was a room like this in their cul-de-sac.

Beside the piano was probably the top strangest instrument he found in there. To the boy with little to no musical experience, the cimbalom that was near him just looked like an air hockey table with strings stretched across the top of it. Kevin didn't know what it was and he didn't know that it was suppose to be played by striking two beaters on the strings, but he didn't care. He reached over to the cimbalom and plucked one of the strings with his own finger. The sound it made vibrated through the string and echoed into the room with an odd discord against his finger.

To the boy with little to no musical experience, it sounded cool.

He stood up from the piano stool and continued to pull on strings, beginning to pull and tap on them in different patterns until he found a beat to stay with. "_Welcome to the cul-de-sac, this is where the street ends. I am just a rapper, I ain't got the time for speakin_," Kevin began to recite to himself, pretending that the instrument he was playing with was the one that played behind Childish Gambino's track. "_Nigga stay weak like a tornado and a tree branch. I never have a weak day, my life's a long weekend. Fuckin with ya raw, bitch. My mouth should get tested. Sleepin' on a nigga, hope you feel well rested. _Kevin B_. stay hard, can't nobody pull the cord. A nigga fucked up_..."

Kevin's words began to fade when he realized that he didn't know the words to the song as well as he expected himself to. Like a child quickly uninterested by the toy that was given to him, Kevin moved on from the cimbalom and sat back down on the piano stool.

Wanting to continue his solo concert, Kevin laced his fingers together and stretched his arms in front of him, cracking his knuckles. He pressed down on one key on the piano, listening to the note to hear if it was familiar. He pressed down on a few more, then pressed down on some of them to hear how they sounded together, and when he finally found the notes and chords that sounded like the ones he was looking for, Kevin began to play a new song.

"_Now tell me do I wish too much? Is it cause I kick it and I drink too much? But the truth is I wanna live too much and you're the type of girl I'd like to give too much till it's enough_," He sang the words as he remembered hearing them in his ipod, while trying his best to keep playing the piano at the same time, a task that was much harder for the average C/B student. "_Please tell me I'm close to your type: not cute, but I know what's right; not sweet, but I know what's nice; and I could make you laugh and smile all night_-" His finger slipped and accidentally played an extra note in the chord he was playing. Kevin paused, frustrated at himself for messing up, but after a moment of telling himself it was okay because he hadn't played in years, he continued. "_Might mess up and say the wrong lines and I tend to say things at all the wrong times, but I'm confident that we're so right, even with these flaws I'm not the wrong guy_." Kevin heard the room door creak open wider at that moment, but he kept playing anyways. "_Off bat I could say I'm not book smart, but I'm smart enough to protect your heart. Dump your past, it belongs in the junkyard. Let's hook up, all we need it a jump start_-"

"Kevin?"

That was when he stopped playing. Kevin took his hands off the keys and stood up straight from the piano stool. He turned around and standing near the room entrance was Edd, giving another bewildered stare at him. "Kevin, what are you doing here?"

"I... I don't- oh, you know." The last thing Kevin wanted to do was look like he was snooping around, even though he obviously was, and was now trying his best to play it off cool. He walked away from the piano and towards Edd, trying to think of an excuse to say. "I just passed by the room and started wondering why there were so many instruments in here..." That was when he saw a guitar: a perfect escape. He picked it up and inspected it, admiring its neck and lightly strumming on the strings. "Eduardo," Kevin jokingly called him with an extremely thick American accent. "You play?"

"Oh, just a few. I've had a few piano lessons when I was younger, but everything else in here I taught myself..." Edd always tried his best to stay humble about his talents, but right now he was more focused on making sure that Kevin didn't break any of the prized possessions in the room. "Kevin, don't you think it would be best if we go watch that movie now? I've got the hot chocolate boiling now-"

"_But, baby_," It took Kevin a while, like when he was on the piano, but he was able to identify the notes and chords he was suppose to play for the song. "_You hardly even notice when I try to show you this song is meant to keep you from doing what you're suppose to_-"

By this time, Edd managed to swiftly make it through the walk way and was now close enough to Kevin to catch the guitar if he would ever accidentally drop it. "Oh, Kevin," Edd rose his voice over Kevin's to make him stop singing and playing. "I... I never knew you knew how to play..." He was focused more on the guitar than Kevin, but he knew since childhood that giving even the littlest praise could distract the other boy. "A-actually, I think you're quite extraordinary. Did you ever have any lessons?"

"Thanks." Kevin chuckled. He smiled smugly to himself as he explained, "I never had any lessons before. Honestly. When we were younger, Naz and I tried teaching ourselves how to play cause we thought that we'd be cool if we formed a band. Course, it was just a phase and it didn't work out cause the only thing she was good at was the drums, she was the worst at everything else. But I still kinda play, I play it all by ear, though. I don't know how to do all that... Musical stuff." Without even realizing it, Edd's plan was working and while he was speaking, Edd was actually gradually moving even closer to him. He stretched his arms and right when he was about to take the guitar out of Kevin's hands, Kevin's pride made the distracted boy suggest, "You wanna hear another one?"

Edd knew that at this point, he wasn't going to win. He sighed. "Sure."

Kevin began to hum the lyrics to a song as he began to play again. "_Tell me if I'm wrong. Tell me if I'm right. Tell me if you need a loving hand_," Kevin's voice slightly cracked, something that Edd caught and made him giggle to himself silently, and he knew that Edd noticed and even reacted, but he kept singing anyway. "_To help you fall asleep tonight_."

Edd smiled. Maybe it was because music tends to lead the mind to bliss, but he was now considering their most recent events such as the Winter Formal proposal, the surprise day of indoor movies, and now the singing, and Edd was positive that he'd never seen Kevin so sentimental and devoted to a single person before. Standing before him was someone who was so intangible, even to the mind of Edd.

"_Tell me if I know. Tell me if I do_."

But it was all so obscure. Edd couldn't help but still think: Why him? Ever since his locker had been tagged, Edd expected everyone else to be afraid of even interacting with him for fear of getting called a fag by association, especially after how his own best friends avoided him for days. Why was Kevin doing this? What did Edd do to motivate him to do all this? What had he even done recently to stimulate such an action?

"_Tell me how to fall in love the way you want me to_..."

The song Kevin was singing and playing to began to transition into another one and even though Edd wasn't familiar with any of the songs, he could tell by how the song he was now playing had a faster pace. Edd watched Kevin, now no longer paying attention to the guitar, but to Kevin, and only Kevin.

"... _And if I may just take your breath away. I don't mind if there's not much to say_," Kevin saw that Edd was staring directly as him and, even though seeing that made Kevin want to automatically look away because he didn't know what to do, Kevin was now singing directly to Edd, and only Edd. He woke up early on the first Sunday of Winter Break and now that he had the chance to do what he wanted to do, he wasn't going to let it slip away now. "_Sometimes the silence guides our minds, so move to a place so far away._"

"_The goose bumps start to raise the minute that my left hand meets your waist_," Without even realizing it, the guitar was beginning to shake in Kevin's hands. The cool, usually composed, athlete who's played games in front of huge crowds and loves showing off his wheels was now shaking because he was actually nervous. The longer that Edd looked at Kevin, the quicker that Kevin's walls began to shatter. "_And then I watch your face, put my finger on your tongue cause you love the taste, yea_h."

Kevin saw in Edd's eyes a different light. "_These hearts adore everyone the other beats' heart is for. Inside this place is warm, outside it starts to pour, coming down_."

"_One love, two mouths_"

Edd bit the bottom of his lip.

"_One love, one house_"

Kevin could feel his own body heat collecting within his sweater.

"_No shirt, no blouse_"

Edd tugged on the collar of his own shirt down, making the space between his neck and collar bone completely visible to Kevin.

"_Just us, you find out_."

Kevin couldn't keep his gaze away.

"_Nothing that I wouldn't wanna tell you about, no, no_."

As he reached the chorus of the song, Kevin stopped strumming the guitar strings and began hitting the area near the sound hole, the beat echoing through the guitar and controlling their thumping heart beats, loudly and powerfully. "_Cause it's too cold for you here and now, so let me hold both your hands,_" Kevin stopped beating the guitar, now just looking into Edd as he sang the final words. "..._ In the holes of my sweater._"

Kevin and Edd were the only ones in the room, but silence started to guide their minds into another place.

"Kevin..." The time Edd was finally going to ask Kevin was now. "Why are you doing all this?"

Kevin put the guitar back down where he found it. "Because, Double D, isn't it obvious?" He turned to face, to make sure that he was looking at him when he said it. "Because I'm falling for you... And I mean that I know I'm falling in-"

"Me, too." Edd suddenly said, surprising both Kevin and himself. "Me, too."

Edd's bottom lip trembled at his own words. Kevin couldn't stop watching Edd's lips. With the snow falling outside, the silence in the rest of Edd's house, and the sound of their hearts beating, Kevin couldn't hold back anymore.

So that was when he leaned forward and pressed his lips against Edd's.

It was just a small kiss, a short, chaste pureness that was shared between them. So with the distance between him and Edd now so close that there was only one breath instead of two, when Kevin looked into Edd's eyes he was looking at a reflection of himself. Was what he just did okay?

Then it was Edd who pulled into the kiss. He pushed his mouth into Kevin's, obviously inexperienced, but he could feel Kevin's smile against his. Kevin wrapped his arms around Edd while Edd's hands rested on Kevin's chest, his frail fingers pulling and gathering the yarn of his sweater into his palms as he pulled Kevin closer.

"It's just us..." When they broke away, Edd could feel how warm his own face was. "At home."

Edd wasn't even sure what came over him, this inappropriate, spontaneous behavior. But before he knew it, it was a rush up the stairs, kisses against the hallway walls, and a scrambled into his bedroom. Edd was sat at the edge of his bed when Kevin kissed him at the corner of his mouth, Kevin leaning into him with one knee separating Edd's apart on the bed until he was gently pushing himself against Edd. Edd placed a nervous hand behind Kevin's neck and tried to tilt his face so he can feel the softness of Kevin's lips again, but Kevin pulled away. He instead began to trail light kisses on Edd, from his mouth to his jawline to his neck, and as he got lower, Edd was falling backwards on his bed. Kevin pulled down on the collar of Edd's shirt, making sure to get a taste of those collarbones he so craved before.

To Edd, it was enchanting, an entanglement of limbs and unexplolred territories. For the first time in his life, he was doing something he never studied or researched for before, but he was still doing it because he wanted to. Edd was exposed. He was exposed to Kevin and in that very moment, he realized that was the only thing he ever wanted.

But to Kevin, it was a different story.

The moment they opened Edd's bedroom door, even in the heat of things, Edd asked between kisses, "Kevin..." A kiss. "Can you take off..." Another kiss. "Your shoes and wear these slippers when you go in my bedroom?" Kevin obeyed and managed to switch shoes while still maintaining their arousal. When they finally made it to the bed, it felt more like a wrestle to him, a struggle to get Edd to lay down on the bed, but even then, when they were on the bed, it was literally just them on the bed making out (or, trying to) and having an overlapping of different conversation in between. "You're so good-" "-Before we get way ahead of ourselves, I want you to know that I'm a grower, not a shower-" "-Kevin, this isn't how the school's health textbook said we were suppose to-" "-Double D, you're ripping my sweater-" "-Oh my-" "-Sorry. My cock-" "-This is more stimulating than when I took that college course last summer about-" "-Hey, there's a hole in my sweater now-"

And when the mess was finally over, they were both left laying down on Edd's bed, sheets now wrinkled and tried to wash over their neighboring bodies like waves. They were both out of breath and panting and their faces flushed and had beads of sweat beginning to prespire off of them, but that was as messy as it got. Kevin looked at them and the most clothes they got off were his shoes when they entered (which only got replaced with house slippers), Edd's hat slipping off the corner of the bed and onto the floor, Kevin's hat off his head and now on top of Edd's, and a hole in Kevin's sweater where the yarn became loose and stretched. Kevin sighed. This wasn't even close to a mess. What they tried doing was just a mess. He was disappointed, truth be told, hoping that they would have gotten farther than last time.

Kevin turned on his side and looked at Edd who he found staring back at him. The moment that Kevin faced Edd, a wide smile sprawled across the other boy's face. It stretched so wide that his teeth began to show and the gleam in his eyes became glossy with elation. The sight made Kevin smirk. _What a dork,_ he thought. He moved forward and kissed Edd on the forehead.

Okay. So maybe to Kevin, it was all more enchanting than he thought.

"Oh, my!" Edd suddenly jumped up from his bed. "I forgot that I had the hot chocolate boiling in the kitchen!" He began to head out his bedroom before he turned back to Kevin. "I will handle that. You can go back downstairs and we'll proceed with those movies."

"Good idea, JARVIS." Kevin called out as Edd ran out of his bedroom, the sound of his footsteps going down the staircase slowly fading.


	6. Six Red Solo Cups

The lighted numbers of the gym scoreboard timer were counting down, from minutes to seconds to milliseconds and Edd found himself scooting forward on the edge of his seat as closer and closer it reached to zero.

The basketball game ended and everyone stood up from their seats, except for Edd who clung onto his messenger bag strap as though it was connected to the ground and the only thing able to hold anyone down. Even though he couldn't see behind the standing bodies, on the basketball court were cheerleaders waving their pom poms in the air and the Peach Creek High's boy's basketball team throwing fist pumps in the air and making sure their winning cries were heard by the losing team.

This was not the environment Edd would usually be found on a Thursday night.

But then again, Edd hadn't exactly been doing what would usually be expected from him. The day that all the students returned to school from their Winter Break was the day that Edd actually didn't walk to school and back with Ed and Eddy. He hadn't even been eating lunch with them, spending that much time with them after school, or honestly even given a thought about them. Instead, Ed was greeted in the morning with a cold Kevin who had been waiting at his driveway for a good hour because the other boy can never trust himself with waking up later and missing Edd. Lunchtime was spent behind the gym and trying to keep warm on a snow-covered bench, simply because Kevin wanted to converse with Edd and he insisted that conversations over food were always better, and because the always so observant Edd has noticed that even though Kevin liked to appear big by shouting how he didn't care if anyone called him a fag and how he would kill anyone who tried calling Edd a fag again, there was something about the mixture of Edd and Kevin's friends within the same area that would glaze a confused look over Kevin's eyes as to whether he should try to impress Edd or his friends. And as if Edd didn't spend enough time with Kevin during the day already, after school was spent doing as much homework as Edd could before basketball practice was over, because the expected visit from Kevin would usually distract him from accomplishing anything else. And if Kevin wasn't there to physically distract Edd, Edd would often find himself snapping out of the thoughts of Kevin as soon as he realized that he had poured shredded lettuce leaves for his ants into the pot of Jim, his pet cactus, and drowned his ant farm with water that was meant to moisten Jim's soil.

Every moment and strand of time and molecule and atom was Kevin to Edd and no longer Ed and Eddy, and honestly, Edd saw nothing wrong with ignoring the people who ignored him unless he was needed to gain something for them. Especially since nothing seems like it could be more worthwhile than during Winter Break when Kevin and Edd did the unspeakable: breaking the law written on the sticky notes on the wall saying that kissing was not allowed in Edd's parents' bedroom.

It was Thursday night and Peach Creek High had just won another basketball game.

While most of the basketball team had already rushed to the locker rooms and the crowd moved out of the gym to allow the janitors to beginning sweeping the floors, Edd still lingered behind on the bleachers.

"Whoa, Double D! Awesome seeing you here!"

Edd looked up, not even realizing that he was spending more time staring at his shoes than what was going on around him, and found an excited Nazz at the bottom, still sporting the form fitting cheerleader uniform and bright smile. "Salutations!" He walked down from the bleachers until he was on the same level as her. "You did an exceptional job supporting the team with your exuberance."

"Uhh... Yeah, totally." The cheerleader, though easily confused, always loved being near a friend. She smiled at him, "So, let me guess. You're waiting here so you can hitch a ride with Kevin to the after party?"

"After party?" Edd repeated, never hearing a party after a game being mentioned before.

"Yeah, after party. Win or lose, the guys on the basketball team usually rotate at who's place it's gonna be taken place at. I know Kevin has always been going to them, even while he was still JV his freshman year." Nazz explained as though this was something everyone was expected to know, and then slowly began to digress in her own conversation. "Well, I'm actually not sure for the past few parties if Kevin's been going, though. I haven't been going to the last few because I've been asked by Jimmy's mom and dad to watch over the little dude. I'm not sure why they plan so many date nights and why Jimmy still needs to get watched over at night, but you know me, I never mind babysitting for everyone at the cul-de-sac."

Edd shrugged his thin shoulders. "I'm not sure... Going to this after party, I mean. It's Thursday, a school night." He never knew that the basketball team even had after parties and Kevin hadn't ever mentioned them before. Edd just knew that after every basketball game he would attend, Kevin would wave goodbye to his team and friends and then walk back home with Edd. "Though, I also still wonder as to why Jimmy still needs to have a babysitter when he should be at an age appropriate enough to handle responsibility of being by one's self."

At that moment, one of the players that was still in his basketball uniforms and had burnt orange hair approached Edd and Nazz. He put a hand on Nazz's shoulder to get her attention and she was familiar with him, for Edd watched as they exchanged a small handshake and then hugged. "Oh, shoot," Nazz reached for her cell phone hidden in her bra padding as it lit up and rang with the chorus of a pop love song. "I gotta go. Jimmy's rents are waiting for me. Later, guys!"

When she waved goodbye and left the gym, the boy noticed Edd, staring at him up and down with round eyes that didn't seem to match his demeanor. "Double D, right?" His voice had a slight roughness to it, as though he had been yelling just before. "Kevin's gentfriend?"

It felt awful not knowing the basketball player's name, especially since Edd recognized his face as one of the jocks that he used to see Kevin eat next to during lunch all the time, but Edd nodded anyways, not even sure which question he was nodding at.

His eyes squinted at Edd, making him begin to feel nervous when he realized that he was being judged by one of Kevin's friends. After a long moment of being inspected harshly by wide eyes, Kevin's fellow ginger friend asked, "You wanna come with us after the game? You and Kev can come in my car since his ride's been in the shop after some punks wrecked it at school before Winter Break."

"To the after party?" Edd immediately asked. Although he didn't want to make a bad name for himself in front of Kevin's friend, Edd still didn't want to make bad choices for himself. "I apologize, but we have school tomorrow and I'm afraid that-"

"No, dude," he cut off Edd. He paused, Edd able to see the thought process rotating its gears within his head. And then he said with an ever so sweet smile, "To study. We're heading over my house to study after the game since... Well, you know. Tomorrow's Friday and there's that test or whatever tomorrow."

Edd stared at him, wondering if he was expected to fall for the obvious lie.

"C'mon. We all want you to come over. What kind of a study session would it be without you?"

Edd felt uncomfortable with Kevin's friend. But he tried to push his intuition aside. "Well... Perhaps if Kevin goes, I shall as well."

That was enough for Kevin's friend to hear. "Alright, cool." He said as he started walking out of the gym and towards the lockers to change without even telling Edd good-bye. "I'll tell Kevin you said you're gonna- I mean, I'll ask Kevin if he wants to go!"

Maybe this should have been a sign that the night wasn't going to turn out well.

Because before Edd knew it, he was sitting in the backseat of a sports car with Kevin as the loud sounds of 2 Chainz and other unforgiveable artists beated through the nighttime streets. Both Kevin and Edd were sitting in the backseat, Edd buckled next to the window on the right side and Kevin taking the unpopular middle seat just so that he was beside Edd. Although Edd hadn't said a word after they squeezed through one of the only two doors on the car and into the back, Kevin couldn't stop staring at him as though he wanted to say something. But of course, with the presence of Kevin's friends, there wasn't anything he was going to say that would risk his image with them.

"You have such a cruddy car!" A thick Australian accent complained in the front passenger seat. It was another name that Edd did not know, but he could recognize the tossled golden strands of hair and brazen attitude as being another one of the jocks that could be seen with Kevin at school. "Oh yah, that's right," the blonde continued. "It's not even your car, it's that girl you're sleeping with who bought this hunk of junk for you!"

"Shut the hell up, man. Yeah, she's annoying and is an attention seeker, but she's a princess who gives more bucks for each fuck." The orange haired boy that talked Edd into coming with them earlier was the one driving. He added, "Sides, you're the only one who sucks. Wrestling? Really?" He was speaking as though wrestling was the most disgusting thing in the world. "How do you go from doing football and then doing wrestling for winter sports? You shoulda been smart like me and Kevin and gone to basketball. Right, Kevin? Because seriously. Wrestling. What are you? Gay?"

Edd took a glance at Kevin who stared back at him, still confusing over why Edd was in the car with his athletic friends. Because Edd knew that Kevin would never be the first to speak up, Edd sat up straight in the back seat and cleared his throat so that he was heard, "Excuse me, but what you just stated was extremely offensive."

Even though he was driving, Kevin's friend turned to face Edd. "Sorry." He muttered, but he quickly glared at the other boy and muttered, "You're still gay."

Edd sat back in his seat and sighed. Kevin saw that and, being the kind who always needed the push to move, it was his turn to scoot forward in his seat and talk to his friends. "Hey, seriously, dude." His voice came out low and received all attention. "Stop saying that."

The driver shrugged. The blonde friend turned around in his seat, pulling on the seat belt and wrapping his arm around the chair to face Edd, brown eyes flashing each time they would pass a street lamp and it would glow through the car windows. "He doesn't mean it to be mean." He explained reassuringly to Edd. "Well, he is mean. But he's not just mean, he's also a jerk and a douche, but it's also something we just do to each other. We like bashing each other for fun. All this crud we say to each other is just cause we can say it to each other." Now he turned his face towards Kevin. "Right or am I right?"

"No, you're just dumb." The other friend cut in. Both he and Kevin laughed. Edd didn't understand why it was funny.

"I'm not dumb!" Ignoring the gingers, the blonde raised his voice in attempt to change the subject. "'Sides, what happened to that thing with all the notes and gifts on your desk, Double D? Did you ever say yes to Kevin yet?"

This was where Kevin stepped in without needing any push. "Drop it, man." Because the truth was that Edd never gave an answer, even though it had been weeks, but Kevin never bothered him about it since the day he promised not to. "You don't need to know."

"But I want to know," the blonde whined as he turned to face the front. "Cause I got a whole crud load of tardies for going into your classes and leavin those things on your desk for Kevin so he wouldn't get caught, and also cause I'd rather be going to the dance with you two than this guy-" he was referencing the friend driving "- and his thing. I know that my girl would like you, Double D, way more than-"

"That's just cause she's Asian, man." The car drove past a red light and several cars at the intersection began to honk, but the friend driving didn't care. "Course she'd rather rather go with Kevin and Double D. Double D's a genius, he'd fit in with the Asian population."

At that single statement, another argument arose between the two about their girlfriends that left Kevin and Edd alone to themselves in the backseat, just as long as they didn't mention either of their names again. Kevin's fingers brushed against's Edd's hand and then laced themselves between Edd's fingers. Edd turned to his left to look at Kevin, but the nighttime made it difficult for him to understand what the shade in Kevin's green eyes were telling him.

The argument continued between Kevin's two friends all the way to their destination, which was a tall house in the middle of the city that had all its lights on and music playing louder than the one in the car and people crawling in and out of the house through the doors and even through the windows upstairs. Edd knew it and still couldn't believe that he allowed himself to follow them to their after game "study session".

"Dude," Kevin's blonde friend stepped out of the car, and then pulled the seat forward so Kevin and Edd would be able to exit from the backseat and through the front door. "You're not even here yet and the party started."

"I don't care." Kevin's orange haired friend locked the car as soon as everyone was out and closed the car doors. "My brothers are there, so they got things handled. Just as long as nobody goes into Dad M's lab or Dad H's play room, we'll be good."

The four entered the party together and the sight of the athletes made everyone inside raise their red solo cups in the air and cheer. Kevin's friends dispersed themselves among their people while Kevin and Edd gradually retreated against one of the walls where there were less people around. Although Edd could recognize a lot of the people in the party from school, and could recognize that a lot of the people in the party were obviously too old to be going to their school and doing the things they were doing with the people who did go to their school, he could hardly remember ever having a decent conversation with any of them or even knowing their name. But then again, he didn't even know the names of either of the two boys that he was in the car with just earlier.

"I can't believe you wanted to go to one of these." Kevin cleared his throat, trying to think of something to say. "I never thought you did, that's why we usually just went home after the games."

"I didn't. Your, um... Aquaintence had told me an altered description of the location we were going to." Edd simply said. The people around them would every now and then glance at the boys, making Edd feel uncomfortable and as though they were just waiting for him and Kevin to do something for them. He brought his attention back to Kevin. Remembering from his small encounter with Nazz, Edd realized that these after parties were where Kevin always was after the game. Was Edd holding Kevin back from his friends? "Um... I'm beginning to quench for a drink-"

"Me, too." Kevin's entire being jumped up. This was a sign for an easy escape to think of something smarter to say before returning back to Edd.

"I'm... I'm really thirsty. Yeah. I think I'll get us some- do you want me to get us some drinks?"

Before Edd could say anything, Kevin already rushed away from him and into the crowd of people grinding to the music playing throughout the house.

Well then.

Edd began to walk away, still feeling the eyes of some of the other party goer's crawling on his back. He didn't dare turn around for fear of seeing someone he actually did know the name to. So instead, he traveled through the house, the house of Kevin's friend, soon walking up a staircase with clothing articles already strung around the railings and banister. He walked upstairs and tried to find a place that could block out the music as much as possible. The first room he regrettably opened the door to was being occupied by obscene actions, and then the bathroom was being occupied by someone who apparently needed two other people to help them do whatever possible thing would require three people to do in the bathroom (no matter how much Edd wished he didn't, he knew what that thing was), and then the next door Edd opened the door to introduced him to a bubbly golden haired boy complaining with an ebony haired boy about how much they hated it when their brother threw parties. Edd walked out of that room before he risked becoming a part of the conversation and actually having to learn the names of people in this party.

He finally found a door that led to an empty room, or rather, empty of any people. It was a clean room, perfect to his comfort, and when he closed the door he discovered that the walls to the room were sound proof. That was probably because what Ed walked into wasn't just a room, but a lab, probably the lab of Dad M that Kevin's friend mentioned earlier, an unexpected treasure hidden within this house of terror. The floors were of that white tile that still didn't match the whites of the walls, and the counters all along the border of the room and in rows in the middle were decorated with test tubes and beakers filled with differeing chemicals and mixtures that challenged Edd's mind with guessing what they were just by appearance. There was a computer and a book shelf with collected works and worn down notebooks, but what called forth Edd's attention was the telescope. It was grand and magnificent and all kinds of positive adjectives that Edd could think of. He looked left and right, even though he knew that he was the only one who entered the lab, and then rushed to the telescope like a kid to an amusement park ride.

It didn't take long before Edd was lost in the recognition of stars and constellations above him in the night sky. He was so absorbed in the shining lights that he didn't notice the door to the lab being opened by Kevin holding two red solo cups, who was directed to the lab by some of the other people in the party who claimed seeing Edd walking down the hall. Kevin was silent as he closed the door behind him and put the cups down on the counter and crept behind Edd. He held his breath before leaning close to Edd's ear and whispering, "What're you looking at, dork?"

That shocked Edd and made him immediately pull away from the telescope and stand up, taking a step back right into the other boy. Edd turned around and when he realized it was only Kevin, he put one hand on Kevin's shoulder for support as he took a deep breath and clutched onto his chest with his other hand. "My goodness, Kevin!" His eyes were wider than saucers. "If you had astonished me anymore, you could have given me sudden cardiac arrest!"

Kevin laughed. He hugged Edd, meaning to apologize to him, but was laughing at him too much to say the words.

"Do you find that amusing?" Edd stepped away from both Kevin and the telescope as though they were now his sworn enemies. "Well, I bet you wouldn't find that as amusing if I did have sudden cardiac arrest and you realized that you have no way of performing early defibrillation on me and you had very little experience giving cardiopulmonary resuscitation-"

"Chill out, Double D." Kevin's laughter was beginning to tire down and he was able to speak again. He walked back to pick their drinks off the counter, wiping off the condensation that was left behind from the few seconds they were no longer in his hands. "It was just a joke."

"Jokes are supposed to be entertaining and I believe that was as entertaining as owning a business during the Great Depression."

Kevin paused and studied Edd for a moment. "Okay," he sat down on one of the moveable stools next to the counters and rolled his way towards Edd. "I heard this one when I was in middle school: how does the solar system hold up its pants?"

Edd looked at Kevin, unsure whether or not he should even ask. "How?"

With his usual smug expression and a proud voice, Kevin answered, "With an Asteroid Belt."

Edd stared at Kevin. Kevin stared at Edd.

"Okay," a small smile formed on Edd's face after a moment as he tried to hold back a laugh. "That was funny."

Kevin smiled back at Edd and handed him one of the cups, and then took a drink from his own. Edd took the cup and automatically recognized the contents inside. Inside was a swirl of alcohol and lost memories of a night stuck in a garage that Edd has still failed to remember. He immediately gave the cup back to Kevin who, confused, took the cup back. Since Kevin already drank everything in his cup, he just put Edd's cup into his. He looked up at Edd. "You okay?"

The truth was that he wasn't. Edd was uncomfortable and lied to. He was not okay.

But he looked back at Kevin. "Oh, I'm doing just fine."

Edd walked toward the bookshelf and tried to busy his attention away at the numerous titles. Kevin knew that there was something wrong, but he was already beginning to feel the buzz clouding his head from trying to properly mend things. So instead, he rolled his way to the computer. He moved the mouse, finding that the computer was just black on a power saving mode, and started looking around the desktop before he began playing a round of Brick Breaker.

Even though Edd tried ignoring it, he couldn't help but keep thinking about it as long as Kevin was still in his peripheral vision. He turned to completely face Kevin from where he was standing. "Kevin," he called for Kevin's attention, but the other boy's attention was wouldn't stray away from the game. "How many drinks have you had already?"

"Hmm? What?" Kevin paused his game and span on his seat. He finished gulping down the contents in Edd's drink, and then thought. "Well, uhh... I don't know. I was really nervous earlier so I got a few cups to calm me down a bit. So plus the one I just drank, and your's I just drank... I don't know, like, six?" From where he was sitting, Kevin could see that Edd was horrified at that answer. Kevin stood up from the stool as he defended, "But, uhh, don't worry cause I'm not totally wasted. Honestly. What they have here is really light and, in fact, nothing isn't ever that really strong on me and it would take a lot more to actually get me gone. I've got a pretty good tolerance if you ask me, and I blame that on Rolf and his jugs from his 'old country' that he used to share with me a lot when we were younger." Like that made Edd feel any better. Kevin continued, "Unless you want me to get wasted, you know, so you can... Well, you know... Take advantage of me and..."

Edd stared at Kevin blankly. "What?"

"I mean-" Kevin's face immediately turned the color of his hair as he turned back around on his seat to continue playing Brick Breaker. The fact that Edd didn't seem at all interested in what he said was what made him automatically feel embarrassed for even mentioning it. This was another one of those moments where he could reward himself for saying the wrong things at the wrong time. "Yeah." He couldn't even think of anything clever to say that would change the subject.

Edd rose an eyebrow, wanting to question where that suggestion even came from, but considering Kevin's reaction made him not mention it anymore for both of their sake But even though Edd wouldn't mention it again, he still wanted to keep talking to Kevin. "Um..." He sighed as he browsed through various conversation topics in his mind to choose. "Your friends seem nice."

Kevin laughed at that statement, even though Edd didn't mean it as a joke.

"But um, I..." Edd tried to think of the least offensive way to say it. "I haven't learned any of their names."

"That's fine." Kevin pressed on the arrow keys to move the paddle and keep reflecting the ball back to hitting the bricks and past the walls. "They know you and that's all that matters."

Edd glowered as he heard that. "But, why shouldn't I know your friends' names? How do I share my gratitude to them for inviting us to their..." Edd needed a moment to find the right word. "Shindig?"

"You don't need to know their names because the mention of them would automatically have to make the writer turn this into a cross-over and the writer thinks it's too much work to do that." Kevin casually explained as he broke through fourth wall in Brick Breaker. "Besides, you don't have to thank them for anything. Those guys are assholes."

"If they are as what you insulted them to be," Edd walked across the tiled floors and sat down on the stool beside Kevin. "Why do you consider them your friends?"

The question made Kevin stop playing his game. He turned to make his entire body face Edd and away from the computer screen with the ball bouncing past the paddle and making him automatically lose. "Are you really asking that? That's like asking why you're friends with Ed and Eddy."

This made Edd immediately squint his eyes at Kevin. "I understand that there are a plethora of occurrences that could refer to Ed and Eddy as the previously mentioned, but how is that explanation even able to connect to our current argument-"

"Edd," Whether it was because of what they were talking about or the amount of drinks Kevin had already consumed, Edd found the seriousness in the ginger's voice to be unsettling. "Ed and Eddy are even bigger assholes than the entire basketball team combined. You don't deserve to be associated with those douches for what they've done to you."

This conversation was not going the way Edd intended it to be going and even though it has been a long time since Edd even spoke with his friends, they were still his friends. "I hate to leave things without conclusion, but I think I want to leave now."

Before Kevin could say anything else, Edd had stood up from his seat and left the lab. Kevin didn't even bother picking the empty red solo cups from the counter. He walked out of the room and tried to make his way past the crowds of people who were busy drinking away their own problems. Kevin didn't think that anything could ever go wrong as long as he was with Edd, but as he passed by people who would stop and stare at him chasing Edd out of the house and he seemed to naturally be telling them "Everything's okay- don't worry 'bout us" so that everybody would still think he was cool, Kevin knew he screwed up somewhere.

Edd had to step over someone who was faced down, knocked out on the front steps of the house. Outside the air was cold and the street lamps were yellow. He kept walking down the street, pulling down on his hat to cover his ears and pulling the collars of his cardigan up, wishing that he had thought about wearing a jacket that night instead. There were very few cars driving at this hour and the street lamps contrasted brightly against the dark sky. The sidewalks seemed to keep stretching forward as Edd kept walking, as though there was no end and he would never get away from Kevin.

"Edd, wait!" Kevin caught up to Edd and put a hand on Edd's thin shoulder, forcing him to turn around his entire body and face him. "C'mon, you know it's a long walk back. We got a ride to this party cause my bike's still getting fixed in the shop; if you want, I can go back and ask for a ride back home-"

"No, Kevin." Edd was somebody who knew that whatever he said, he should stand firmly. "Just allow me to continue my trek back home, where I belong and I am suppose to be because," Edd's eyes began to tear up, but he tried his best not to choke on his words. "Because for God's sake, Kevin, it's Thursday and a school night and I should never be found in a place like this. I don't belong here, I don't belong anywhere, and I'm starting to think that I don't even belong with you!"

Kevin's eyes widened at that last sentence. "Wha..." He was hurt. He was angry. He was sad. He was confused. He could hardly form sounds with his mouth. "What... What do you mean?"

"Look at us, Kevin." Edd's voice was coming out low and stern and as though it was venom to his own tongue because it wasn't suppose to ever do this, or at least in the perception of Kevin. "What are we doing? You are one of the school's most popular students and star athletes with plenty of friends to spare, and I'm just this... This _dork_ who finds entertainment in reading the encyclopedia with _asshole_ friends that he doesn't even 'deserve to be associated with'." Each word Edd would say with form mini clouds of fog, floating into the air and permanently engraving themselves into the back of Kevin's mind. "We shouldn't be doing what we're doing. I am just brains and you are just brawns and we were ridiculous to think if we can be together without having conflicts bigger than we can handle."

The streetlamp on the other side of the street of them began to flicker, making Kevin wish he could just reach over and pull a chain to turn it back on completely like the light bulb in his garage. There was a look in Edd's eyes that told Kevin that this entire time, Edd knew it was Kevin who tagged Edd's locker and the moments they spent together were all also just a part of the cruel prank he was pulling.

Kevin took a step back from Edd. "You don't remember anything from that night," He wasn't sure if the numbness his body was beginning to feel was from the cold or from the disconnection forming between him and Edd. "The night we got stuck in my garage, do you?"

"No." Edd stated. "No, I don't."

And it was at that moment when Kevin realized that the entire time he thought he was falling in love with Edd, he was really just falling in trouble. And now, he wasn't sure if he would know how to stand up from this fall.

Kevin stared at Edd, causing the emptiness he was feeling in his chest to be filled with rage. It was at that moment when Kevin just wanted to shove Edd, using both hands to push down on both of Edd's thin shoulders and making Edd fall backwards on the sidewalk. Kevin just wanted to kick Edd hard and when Edd would immediately defend himself into fetal position, Kevin would just raise one of his legs and stomp on Edd's side until he could hear the sound of Edd's ribs against the concrete. Kevin would then go down and pin Edd to the sidewalk, using his weight on top of Edd's waist so the smaller boy wouldn't be able to move, and Kevin would just keep punching Edd in the face until the sound of Edd's skull would echo against the sidewalk and his pale complexion would be bruised and beaten and colored by the reds of his own blood dripping from his nose and mouth. Kevin's knuckles would turn red too, but he wouldn't care. He would just keep pounding Edd in the face until he was unrecognizable and nobody would be able to realize that this beaten boy was the boy that Kevin had spent his Christmas and New Year's with, the boy that Kevin watched the Ironman movies and drank hot chocolate with, the boy that Kevin asked to Winter Formal, the boy that made Kevin actually believe he was falling in love.

But even with as much rage building within Kevin, he didn't do any of that.

He and Edd stared at each other with an intractable tension. When they knew that they or the other wouldn't say anything else, Edd turned around and continued to walk down the sidewalk and home. Kevin shoved both hands in the pocket of his jeans and began to follow after Edd with a far distance.

Above them the stars continued to twinkle and shine and Kevin hated them for that. It was as though the lighted numbers on the gym scoreboard timer were counting down to more than just the end of the basketball game, and the stars were left to mock Kevin for even believing that he had something that actually felt right for once in his life.


	7. Seven Scoops of Ice-Cream

Within the library are fluorescent lights all lined along the ceiling in a conspiracy to make every student who is trying to read or finish their essays before the next period fall asleep.

One of the only few students who wasn't knocked out with drool dripping on the text in front of him was Edd. He had the school's Environmental Science textbook in front of him, flipped to the page starting the chapter about climate change, his eyes gazing over the printed words, subconsciously wishing that climate change would worsen by that one degree it warned about just so there would be floods and droughts that would stop this winter weather from happening.

Edd wasn't actually growing an irrational hate towards the winter. He was probably just tired after what happened while presenting his class project earlier that day. It was a power point he had created and was ready with note cards to be presented in at least two weeks in advance, but the night before, Eddy claimed that he needed to see the project himself and make a few minor adjustments that would sell the entire thing to the class. Edd wasn't sure what they needed to be selling to the class, but he was sure that the class didn't want to buy anything after seeing a presentation about why this upcoming Saturday would be the best night of their lives if they went to Winter Formal with Eddy (with some occasional additions from Ed about how he ran into the turkey from 'Thankskilling' over his Winter Break.) The presentation was suppose to be in relation to the themes that could be found in 'Wuthering Heights' and even though Edd was on a roll when he tried explaining that Edd would be a good date to Winter Formal because he had the combination of Heathcliff's "dangerously attractive free spirit" and Edgar Linton's "practical, enduring love", Edd knew it was best just to give up and stand behind his friends with his note cards in his hands when it was obvious that the rest of the class wasn't buying it when he explained that Ed's meetings with the 'Thankskilling' turkey were paralleled to the ghostly encounters with Catherine's spirit in the novel.

So maybe Edd wasn't actually growing an irrational hate towards the winter, but he would rather let himself develop one towards nature than to people who were important to him.

With only thirty-five minutes given for the students to eat and relax during lunch, Edd isolated himself in the library where the indoor heater kept him warm and the books gave him company. It was only two more classes until school ended and two more days until the weekend.

"Hey, boyfriend."

Edd looked up from the textbook and saw an alluring smile and half-lidded eyes that were smudged with trademark blue eye shadow. "Salutations, Marie."

He immediately returned his attention back to his book and continued scanning through the passages about greenhouse gases trapped in the atmosphere. Marie, although her bangs covered it, rose an eyebrow. The way Edd had calmly greeted her and just went back to his book was too calm. He was suppose to be frightened, jump up from his chair, start shaking in his socks, treat her as though she was the monster hiding under his bed the entire time. She liked the way he was afraid of her because it told her that he was alert when it came to her and was always on his toes when she was near and, even though it may be for all the wrong reasons, thought about her. After all, to survive from your fears you had to understand them and that was the exact reason why Marie liked Edd so much, because he understood her. But the Edd that she found sitting in the library alone reading was not the Edd she knew.

Marie sat down on the edge of the library table and then slowly fell backwards so she was laying on it. She slid across the table so her legs were no longer dangling off the side and she turned so she was on her side, posing so her curves were visible even under the awful library light. "So, I was just wondering if you still needed someone to go to Winter Formal with this Sat-"

When she looked up, Edd was gone.

Edd had closed his textbook and walked between the bookshelves, trying to find where he had found it so he can place it back. With a huff, Marie sat back up straight on the table, jumped off, and followed after him.

He separated two books from next to each other and slid the Environmental Science textbooks in between them. Marie's red painted nails reached for the spine of the book Edd just put back, taking it off the shelf, and throwing it down on the ground. Edd stared at the fallen book, then at Marie, and then when he bent his knees to reach down and pick up the book, Marie pushed the book down and out of his hands before he could stand back up.

"Marie," Edd was becoming annoyed. All he wanted to do was put the book back. "What are you-"

"Can you stop?" Her voice reached a squeak as she whined. She looked around, seeing that she and Edd were the only ones within that aisle of books, and then stared at Edd with a squinted eye. "Because it's getting me really jealous and you know bad things happen when I'm jealous."

Edd picked up the book off the ground and put it back in the shelf quickly before Marie can knock it from his hands again. "I'm afraid that I do not know what you ordain me to cease."

Marie laughed loudly at this. Edd turned his face away from her, wanting to leave, but she was blocking him from leaving the bookshelf aisle and then other way was blocked by a wall. "You so know what I'm talking about," Marie took a step closer to Edd, making him take a step back. "You woke up this morning. _Alone_. You walked to school today. _Alone_. You're spending your lunch in the library._ Alone_. You are alone, Double D, and this is the most alone you have ever felt in your life. Why? Because for some good portion of your life, you were actually spending your life with someone close to you. And even if you treated that someone like a luxury... Even though you were able to just live your life before, they made your life better while they were in it, but you knew that they were just a luxury and that you won't always have them and you prepared yourself for when you wouldn't have them anymore and when you'd get back to your basic life again- but even all that, once you have something and it's gone, it's gone and that something becomes nothing and nothing can remove that feeling of emptiness when it was once filled."

Edd gulped.

"And we all know, Double D," even though her words her hitting hard with Edd, Marie rolled her eyes as though this was all just normal conversation to her. "We all know that luxury and someone you can't stop thinking about was and is Kevin." She put a hand on his shoulder, at first cautious to see if he would immediately take it off, but he let her give her touch of consideration. "And it's okay. We all know people we consider a luxury and we're all afraid of losing them, but even when we lose them, or even if we know we'll never get to have that luxury, that can't stop us from trying to get something... _Better_."

At this point, Marie was beginning to wonder if Edd was getting the hints to her referring to herself. She gently put her other hand on his other shoulder and took another step closer to him. This time Edd didn't take a step back. He was looking away with his eyes casted down, lingering in his thoughts that were swirling in their own hurricane. Marie was now she close to him that she could feel his breath on top of her's. "Now, Double D," she looked at him, batting her eyelashes. "If you want to talk about it, perhaps with someone who is _better_ and _much closer_ to you-"

"Thank you, Marie, but actually, I would prefer not to." Edd slowly pried her fingers off his shoulders, but when he took a step to the side of Marie to walk past her and away, she took a step to her side and blocked him from walking away. "Excuse me, Marie, but may you kindly-"

"No." She stood planted from where she was standing. This was going to be just like the time when she went fishing with May and Lee and her line started moving, a sign of her bait working and getting a fish, but it only disappointed her by disappearing as soon as she began reeling in. She had been so close to getting the fish. But of course, knowing Marie, as soon as the fish let go of her line, Marie jumped out of the boat and tried to get the fish out with her bare hands instead. Now that Edd was trying to escape from Marie's grasps after failing to fall for her sentimental approach, Marie was going to do the same thing she did to the fish. "I am not going to let you get out of this one, Double D."

"But Marie, it would be most-"

"No."

"May you just-"

"I'm going to scream if you keep trying-"

"Marie, please consider that we are in a library-"

"I'm going to scream-"

"Please don't-"

"I'm screaming-"

"Marie-"

"NO, DOUBLE D," Marie was a girl who knew how to scream, and her screamed filled the entire library and echoed past the open doors and through the school hallways. "WE ARE IN A LIBRARY. NO, I WILL NOT TAKE MY PANTS OFF FOR YOU-"

Edd's eyes widened at the sound of her shrieks. He immediately covered her mouth with both hands, muffling the sound as much as he could. As soon as Marie felt Edd's hands on mouth, she smiled and playfully let her tongue escape her lips and lick his palm. The feeling of her saliva on his hands just made Edd cringe and yelp out loud, disgusted at the bacteria that was on his hands and on her tongue, and take his hands off of her. He grabbed Marie by her arms and moved her from where she was standing, pulling her further into the aisle and pushing her against the wall on the other side. Edd wiped his hands dry on the side of his pants, having to satisfy himself with that for now. He looked up at Marie and saw a sly smile on her face.

Seeing that smile automatically made Edd understand how his actions made everything seem even more inappropriate, so then he turned around and peeked his head out of the aisle. The students who were working and the students who were sleeping were now awake and staring directly at him. The sight of it made Edd's face turn pale. "M-my apologies!" He said out loud, but then remembering that he was in a library, dropped his voice into a whisper that was still loud enough for them to hear. "I-I'm not- sh-she's a-actually not- we aren't d-doing anything-"

He gave up. Edd turned back around at Marie, wanting to grip his hands around her throat but didn't because he knew that would probably give her more passage to cover him with her spit. "Why," He was so disgusted that he couldn't even think of the words to say. "Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy..."

Marie looked at Edd and smiled. Now _there_ was the Edd she knew. She pressed her back against the wall and then slid down. Once she was sitting on the floor, she patted on the floor space next to her.

Edd stared at the space next to her, at first reluctant to sit there. He supposed that, knowing Marie, there were probably worst things she would do to him if he didn't obey.

When he sat down on the floor, sitting as close to the other bookshelf as he could and away from Marie, Marie only scooted closer to him. "Okay," Marie sat with one knee up and the other leg stretched out in front of her. "Let's talk."

Edd brought his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs to form a sort of protective shield in case Marie tried doing anything to him. "W-what do you wish t-to converse about?"

"Oh, come on, Double D." She rolled her eyes. "I saw the way you looked down and had that look in your eyes when I said his name. It's obvious you still think about that guy. Heck, if you think about him even more, you might get gingivitis " Marie looked at Edd to see if he understood her ginger joke, but he was more just confused as to why that would make any sense. She looked down and softly nudged Edd with her elbow. "Kevin." She was trying not to let him see that she was wishing she was saying her own name. "You still think about Kevin."

Just the mention of Kevin's name made Edd bite down on his bottom lip. He looked down at the fabric of his cardigan sleeves, and then back at Marie. "I suppose."

"So why'd you guys call it a quits?"

"Because," Edd took a moment to form the words. "He was the one who gave the chance and I was the one who took it and... Well, it was great when it was just us, splendid and spontaneous, but whenever we mentioned Ed or Eddy or any of his friends... Then... Well, then it began to feel as though either he was holding me back from my friends, or I was holding him back from his friends. It felt terrible. It was as though it was either Kevin, or Ed and Eddy-"

"So then you chose yourself." Marie finished Edd's sentence. That wasn't what Edd was actually going to say, but hearing it made him realize that was what he was actually doing. Because it seemed like he wasn't going to say anything else, Marie continued, "Listen, I think it's great that you chose yourself, even though any idiot can tell that choosing between your friends and Kevin is a little drastic. I mean, it's possible to have both if you really wanted both, you just gotta work it out somehow or you're gonna end up being bad influences to each other like Sid and Nancy. But choosing yourself's a good option for now, I think, especially when you've basically spent a good portion of your life with the biggest fucker ever." She shrugged with a look in her eye apologizing for keeping the truth known. And then she tried to add, "Oh, but don't think you can stay with this choice forever cause, well, you know, you've got someone here who really, _really_ likes you and doesn't want you to stay alone-"

Edd, still caught up in what she was saying earlier, cut her off. "Kevin is not as disrespectful as you say he is." He paused before continuing to see if Marie would be upset with him speaking in the middle of whatever she was saying, but she waited for him to continue. "Well, what I mean to say is that I would not consider him 'the biggest fucker ever.'" Hearing Edd say the word 'fucker' would forever be embedded in Marie's memory and what she would go to sleep hearing in her head. "Sure, what he wrote on my locker a few weeks ago was obscene, and the time we spent together was an awful trick, but-"

"Wait." Marie sat up straight and put a hand on Edd's knee to make him stop talking. "Kevin wasn't the one I was calling the biggest fucker in your life." She stared at Edd in both surprise and confusion. "And Kevin most definitely is not the one who tagged your locker."

Edd felt all air and thought inside of him completely disappear. "What?"

"No, no, no, no, no," She turned to face Edd and adjusted her legs so she was sitting directly in front of him with her legs crossed. "Kevin wasn't the one who sprayed 'fag' on your locker. It was Ed and Eddy."

And it was at that moment when it all started to make sense to Edd. He could hear Eddy's voice calling him a fag yelling, "_You don't have nay standpoint because there's no point of having one!_" Was Eddy trying to make Edd put aside the tagging at that very moment for a reason other than to focus on getting a date to Winter Formal? Edd could also could hear Kevin's voice repeating in his head. When Kevin had visited him after school the day his locker was vandalized: "_If I could beat up the guys who did that to you, you know I would._" And that night they were at the party, right before he and Kevin had their last conversation: "_Ed and Eddy are even bigger assholes than the entire basketball team combined. You don't deserve to be associated with those douches for what they've done to you_." Kevin knew this entire time. Kevin knew this entire time that it was Ed and Eddy. Kevin knew. Kevin knew. Kevin knew.

It all made sense to Edd now. "But..." Edd's mind was still in the middle of trying to process what was going on, but he was still finding it difficult with missing pieces of information. "Why?" If Kevin knew, why didn't he just tell him?

"I don't know. I thought you knew already." Marie licked her lips as she began to think, too. "I had to hunt around the school to find out, and it wasn't until I stuffed Eddy into a locker when he confessed. He said something about how it was something that his older brother would do (Oh, wait. Never mind. That is who we should all consider the biggest fucker ever), you know, the whole see a fag, call them out for being a fag so all the school can see and you can embarrass the shit out of him-"

"No, I mean," Edd scratched the top of his hat trying to think. "Ed was most likely just following along, but Eddy... Eddy would never do anything unless he is motivated, or inspired to do it... He must have saw or heard something that would have made him assume I was a 'fag'... But what could have happened? I don't believe I ever did anything... Unless I don't remember..."

That was when Edd realized that there was something he didn't remember: the night he and Kevin were stuck in his garage. Kevin remembered that. That was the night before Edd went to school and found his locker tagged. It was all making sense, but Edd just still didn't understand.

Marie looked at the book shelves around them as she thought. "I wish I could tell you more, but Eddy was just screeching to get out of the locker. He wouldn't go into further detail-"

Edd hugged Marie. He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her, taking her into a deep embrace that was long enough for Marie to feel his breath sink into his chest and out through a relieving sigh. She closed her eyes and, for those few seconds, the raging whirlwind known as Marie felt for the first time a genuine sense of serenity.

He pulled back from the hug and looked at her, green eyes smiling directly at grey eyes. "Thanks, Marie." And then he left.

Marie stayed for the longest moment just sitting there, absorbing what had just happened. When she stood up, she felt weak at the knees and needed the wall as support. She finally got herself to stand up on her own and then gave a deep breath, knowing that what just happened was the best thing that ever happened. But when she exhaled, Marie realized that what just happened was also the worst thing that ever happened. At the same moment she thought she won Edd, she just allowed Kevin to win this war.

In an angry fit, Marie turned to the bookshelf and shoved the structure as hard as she could. The shelf tilted forward until it fell to its side, crashing and collapsing on the book shelf next to it, and that one falling onto the next, like a game of dominoes The students who were in the library all turned to see the mess with shocked eyes. Marie only stared back at them wildly.

"I DON'T CARE." She knew her life was over. "JUST SUSPEND ME ALREADY FROM SCHOOL ALREADY SO I DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS."

* * *

Basketball practice was over. The past after school practices and games had been a drag to Kevin, but he still played. He couldn't bring his team down for his own personal problems.

He walked home because his motorcycle, sad to say, was still being repaired in the shop. He should have expected it after that appearance of Marie in his garage, but he still couldn't believe at how badly a motorcycle could be ruined. Never ever would he ever underestimate the power of the Kankers again.

Kevin walked up his driveway and, even though he didn't have his motorcycle, opened his garage door to enter his home from there. But instead of finding the empty space where his motorcycle should have been, Kevin found boxes. And boxes. And boxes. And boxes.

He knew what was in those boxes and he groaned at the thought of them. Kevin always thought it was cool, and made him cooler, knowing that his father worked in the jawbreaker factory and would bring the surplus home, but things changed as Kevin got older. As he started joining sports teams that made him start caring about his fitness and having a row of perfect teeth to show off in all of his championship portraits, having something like jawbreakers would just ruin everything for him. So whenever Kevin's father left the boxes of leftover jawbreakers in their garage, Kevin did what he now always did: he looked through the work table for a roll of duct tape and a permanent marker. He ripped off pieces of tape and put them on the top of every box. Then with the marker, he took off the cap and wrote different things for each box: "To: The starving kids in Africa" and "To: The homeless people of Peach Creek" and "To: The underpaid kids in Malaysia who make my shirts" and "To: Rolf's people in The Old Country" and more. Sure they weren't exact addresses, but it was something and Kevin knew that the mailman was smart enough to know what he meant.

As Kevin began to stack the boxes on top of each other off to the side of the garage, he could feel judgmental eyes digging into his back. He turned around, only to find the sight of a light haired boy with just as pale skin and soft eyes and an even softer colored sweater. Kevin stared at the visitor for a moment, at first trying to think of why he was there, but decided it would be better for both of him if he just said: "Go home, Jimmy."

Jimmy, disobeying what Kevin said, walked into his garage, the sound of his boots' heels clicked on the cold ground. He began to circle around Kevin, trying to appear like a shark around a boat filled with bleeding people, but just because it's Jimmy, it appeared more like people when they were going around the Maypole. "I just needed some advice..." Even though he was older now, Jimmy's voice was still pretty light for his age. "And I saw online that when people needed some advice, they go to their gay best friend."

Kevin guffawed at that statement. It wasn't that Kevin didn't like Jimmy, he always found the younger boy to be harmless since they were younger, but there was just a quality in Jimmy that made it so easy to bully. And the fact that Jimmy, for some odd reason, was trying to turn the tables on Kevin, was making Kevin even more annoyed with his presence. "Jimmy, seriously," Kevin put down one of the boxes of jawbreakers and turned to face the other boy. "If you need advice from a gay best friend, go home and talk to a mirror."

"I am not gay!" Jimmy protested as he stepped a foot down. Since he was younger, Jimmy never liked Kevin just because he was so masculine and teased him for playing with 'baby' toys. He pouted and explained, "I'm not gay! That's why I went to you for advice! Because..." He twiddled his fingers together for a moment before continuing in an even smaller voice than he already has, "Because I think I have a crush on Sarah."

"Look, kid, I know I'm cool and all and I can get anyone I want, but I'm not gonna help you hook up with Sarah." Kevin put a hand on Jimmy's shoulder as he broke it down to him. He tried not to laugh, he really did, but he couldn't hold it back. "Besides, I know Sarah and you know Sarah. The girl can be pretty masculine. She can be boy enough for you to be gay for."

"But I'm not gay!" Jimmy's eyes were beginning to tear up and usually that was a sign for people to stop, but it just encourage Kevin to keep teasing him.

"It's okay, dude. We all already know."

"No you don't!"

"You can come out of the closet anytime. We'll be waiting outside for you like in that one movie where they sing all those Beatles songs and that Asian girl comes out."

"I am not in the closet, though!"

"Jimmy, think about it: you can be our Asian girl."

"But I'm not Asian! I'm not gay!"

"Okay. Fine. You're not gay."

"Fine. Okay! So what if I am gay?" Jimmy suddenly said, making Kevin stare at him, wondering what was the point of their banter in the first place. The younger boy continued, "But if I am gay, that doesn't explain me liking Sarah!"

"Dude, Jimmy." Kevin sat down on one of the boxes filled with jawbreakers. He never considered himself smart enough to give advice, but for the first time ever, there was somebody standing in front of him asking for advice, and of all people, it was Jimmy. Kevin didn't want to screw this up. He explained slowly, not just for Jimmy's sake, but for his. "That doesn't matter. You could be straight, but still fall for the same gender. You could be gay, but still fall for the opposite gender. It doesn't matter." Kevin looked up at the hanging light bulb in his garage, remembering. He looked back at Jimmy. "This really smart guy once told me that whatever you or other people label you as, if you fall for someone, then you fall for someone, and because that person you fall for is someone so special to you, you shouldn't let anything or anyone convince you that you can't love them..." As he said each word, Kevin's eyes began to cast down on the floor. "... Even them."

"Was it Michael Jackson?"

Kevin looked up and stared blankly at Jimmy. "What?"

"Who taught you that? You know," Jimmy began to glide his feet across the garage floor as he quoted, "_It doesn't matter if my baby is black or_-"

"No, dude, Jimmy, just shut up." Kevin stood up and had to stop Jimmy from continuing by putting both hands on his shoulder and physically preventing him from trying to dance more.

Jimmy obliged.

Kevin took his hands off Jimmy and stared at him. They were both silent, but the look in Jimmy's eyes and the look in Kevin's eyes somehow understood that the silence made everything mutual. Jimmy understood that who was standing in front of him wasn't the same bully who would make fun of him, and Kevin understood that who was standing in front of him wasn't the same little boy he would always tease. "Sorry. Okay..." Wanting to end the impasse, Kevin suggested, "How about I get you ice-cream? I'll get you two scoops." But then he looked outside and just remembered that it was still winter and the type of weather you wear sweaters for. "I mean, never mind. We don't have to get ice-cream-"

"Five?" Jimmy stared up at Kevin with round eyes. "Five scoops?"

Okay. This kid was just ridiculous. Kevin bargained, "Three."

"Six?"

"Four."

"Nine?"

"Seven."

"Deal!" Jimmy said before Kevin could realized that he let the younger boy haggle him for an even more ridiculous amount of ice-cream scoops. He turned around and was practically bouncing out of the garage as he said, "Just wait here and let me get my new jacket. It was a present I got for Christmas this year; fresh off of the new Betsey Johnson Fall Winter collection!"

Kevin rolled his eyes. Was this the same kid that was trying to convince him that he wasn't gay?

Right before Jimmy completely left the garage, he stopped bouncing in his steps and turned back around at Kevin. With a small smile, "Umm... Thank you." Kevin looked up and watched the boy speak ever so genuinely. "I always thought you were such a bully, but, I mean, I always thought you were cool, too... But, you know, you have been pretty mean to me sometimes, and I really did think you'd keep being mean to me forever, but... I like what just happened right now and being friends with you."

Kevin could only shrug and say, as though it was the most obvious thing ever: "Things don't change unless the people do."

Jimmy smiled and then turned around to quickly grab his jacket. Kevin took his hat off, scratched his head, and then put his hat back on. He wasn't even entirely sure what happened, but all he knew that things between him and Jimmy are supposedly better now. Kevin turned around and continued to stack the boxes away towards the side.

As he was working, a shadow was casted upon him.

Kevin turned around and from the setting sunlight shining outside, the silhouette of a thin boy with dropping shoulders was seen. He squinted, now able to recognize a familiar outline that his own lips and fingertips still had memorized. Kevin asked, "Just you?"

Edd took a step inside of the garage, trying to prevent a smile on his face forming because he was glad that Kevin also noticed the parallelism in their actions. "Just me." He simply replied.

The air between them was thicker than the snow on the ground outside, but for some odd reason, the two were still able to navigate through it.

Kevin put down the last box in the corner and then stood there, staring at Edd from that spot as though he wasn't allowed to observe any closer. "You know," he said, trying to find the right words, not just for Edd, but for himself. "You live down the street. Do you need help going back home?"

"I came here because," Edd had a look of certainty in his eyes. Kevin didn't know why he was there, but he knew whatever it was, Edd was determined to get it. "I need to know, Kevin."

"Know what?"

"Marie told me already, that it was Ed and Eddy behind the vandalism on my locker."

Kevin shifted the weight in his feet.

Edd took a step closer to Kevin, cautious, trying to get a closer understanding to Kevin without actually touching. "Why didn't you just tell me?"

"I don't know," Kevin automatically said, even though he knew. He mumbled out the words as he remembered them, "_They mean no harm..._" Edd frowned. He could tell that he wasn't going to get much information out of Kevin, but it was something he should have expected. Kevin tried to push Edd away, "You know, Jimmy and I are gonna go leave really soon, so-"

"Kevin." The sound of seriousness in Edd's voice stopped Kevin in his own words. Edd stood up straight and stared at Kevin with a desperate but stern expression. "Kevin, I need to know what happened that would make my own friends do that to me. I need to know what happened when we were stuck in your garage. You are all I have."

"Double D... That's gonna take a while. Jimmy'll be back anytime soon."

Edd stared at Kevin with dark eyes. "Please."

Kevin rose an eyebrow at Edd, not able to tell if he should be afraid or amazed at how important this all was to Edd. He looked past Edd and out the garage to see if he can sense Jimmy coming back soon at all.

Then Kevin looked back at Edd. "Okay, I will admit," he smiled to himself at the thought of it. "It was a pretty fun night..."


	8. Eight Chapters Too Long

The light hanging from the garage stayed still, but not in Edd's eyes.

It didn't take long before the room began to sway, or maybe it was just him, because with each gulp he took, he could feel the weight of his eyelids getting heavier and the heat, pouring down his throat and into his stomach, was starting to boil and making him feel warm all over. His cheeks were red, he betted, but not like the color of the hair of the boy in front of him.

"This is going to be a fun night," Kevin said maybe one or two or three or fifteen minutes ago, Edd wasn't even sure anymore, because it felt like just a second later when he continued, "Dude... You are like... The most wasted person I've ever seen."

"Wasted, wasted, wasted..." Edd repeated the word as a messy smile sprawled across his face. His own fingers began to lose feeling and he dropped the can he was holding, tried catching it with his other hand, began fumbling it around with an uncontrollable laugh, and when the can finally crashed on the floor, only a few drops splattered out. Edd hid his smile with both hands, looking both guilty and proud.

Kevin stared back blankly.

When Edd removed his hands, a giggle came out. He walked towards Kevin with an unusual swing in his movement. "Wasted? Me?" Edd continued, beginning to make Kevin feel uncomfortable. "The only thing wasted here is the time the two teenagers in a locked garage," He span around, twice because he was losing control of his own balance, and then approached the motorcycle that he and Kevin had just fixed. His fingers glided above the polished handle bars with a soft playfulness, "Two teenagers in a locked garage with a cold, hard ground, could be using to make their motors go vroom, vroom, vroom..."

* * *

"Good lord!"

Kevin's story telling was suddenly cut by the gasp of the other boy in front of him. Edd had a look of shock and disgust in his green eyes as he put both hands on his head in distress. "No, no, no, no, no," Edd kept repeating. "There was no way... How could I say such vulgar-"

"Alright, already. Can you calm down? " Kevin snapped at Edd, which caused a familiar, uncomfortable silence betwen them. Kevin took a moment to breath and then continued, "Okay. I'll admit that some of the things and words aren't exact, because you were saying a whole load of random crap, but also, remember, I drank a little, too. But, anyways, do you want me to keep telling you what happened, or do you want me to stop?" He had managed to stop Edd from overreacting and becoming hysterical, which was a good thing, but that was before he added, "Besides, it gets worse."

The color in Edd's face drained away. But he nodded. He was the one who asked to know what had happened, so there was no point in stopping the flashback there.

* * *

After a moment, Edd began to return to his fit of giggles. Kevin stared at Edd, and then at his motorcycle, and then back at Edd. Something told Kevin that the motors Edd was referring to wasn't his motorcycle's. "Okay, Double D," Kevin walked towards Edd and began to swat Edd's hands away from his motorcycle. "You need to stop doing, uhh... This and, uhh... Just stop..."

At the feeling of the other boy's hands touching his, Edd felt a a gasp escape his mouth. He turned to face Kevin, with his eyes suddenly wide and bright, which made Kevin's eyes suddenly wide and scared. "No, Double D-" Kevin tried to pull his hand away, but Edd took it back with both of his hands, holding Kevin's hand with a tightness that Kevin knew meant that Edd wasn't planning on letting go.

"You gotta learn how to go with the flow, Kevin." Edd laced and unlaced his fingers around Kevin's, traced the ends of each fingernail, felt each ridge and knuckle, put all his attention on Kevin's hands like a sculptor with his medium. "When the light says go, all you need to know is that if your finger's on the trigger, all attention's on you to quit building the suspension and just go."

Kevin used his other hand to round up Edd by his wrists and shove his hands away from him. He stared at Edd, knowing that it was the alcohol talking, but at the same time, was oddly finding entertainment in this strange Edd. "Double D," Kevin sat down on his motorcycle seat as he chuckled. "Dude, you're talking like that time Rolf got us tickets to a performance to some group from his Old Country, but it turned out to be an acid jazz concert."

"It's called going with the flow, Kevin," The smile across Edd's face was so messy and different from the usual expression Kevin recognized. Edd leaned closer to Kevin and placed both of his hands on the other boy's knees, his fingertips pushing against the fabric of his jeans as they traveled upward. "Like the wind helps the river stream release into the ocean, I can become your succor and blow until your fluids-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Kevin pushed Edd's hands away from him. "Double D, this isn't cool."

Edd pouted at Kevin, his lower lip being pushed forward so much that Kevin couldn't see the gap between the other's front teeth anymore. He stared at Kevin with green orbs that embedded Kevin like burn marks, fogging Kevin's own thoughts with a black smoke that made Kevin choke and unable to think of anything to say next, wondering where the fire that was started by Edd and hurting him so bad was coming from.

It was a fire coming from inside of him.

But was it a fire worth having a few burns from? Kevin shook the thoughts out of his head, closing his mind and taking all the air out of the thoughts until it slowly died out. He straightened his back against the seat of his motorcycle. And then with both hands, he held Edd by both shoulders and commanded with a voice deeper than the sea, "Let there be pizza," and then the garage began to fill with pizzas, and then both boys lived happily ever after.

* * *

Edd stared at Kevin with the most unamused expression. "Really."

Kevin was actually proud of the alternate ending he had told, but the look on Edd's face told him it was unacceptable. "But..." He tried to busy himself by suddenly beginning to stretch his arms, knowing that no matter how physically prepared he might be for storytelling, it was just something he wasn't as natural at as sports, especially when it was a story like this. But Edd kept staring at him, with hands on his hips, waiting for Kevin to quit trying to avoid serious matters. Kevin sighed again, now finished with his stretching. "Okay, fine... I'll keep going..."

* * *

Edd swung a leg over the motorcycle so that he was now also sitting on it, facing Kevin. He scooted closer to the other boy, rubbing himself on the seat and making Kevin feel nervous the closer he got, because even though Edd still had this pants on, the fact that he had already stripped away his cardigan and shirt made Kevin feel goosebumps crawling on his own skin-

* * *

"Wait, wait, wait!" Now that Kevin had decided to continue the story, it was now Edd once again stopping the story. Now he was staring at Kevin with the most confused expression, eyes wide and both palms opened and facing upward to receive any kind of information that would make sense of what was going on. Edd asked, "Why is my shirt off all of a sudden?"

Kevin opened his mouth to say something, decided otherwise and closed his mouth, opened his mouth again, and just found speechless words trying to escape. Even the hand gestures trying to explain why ended up just becoming a flail mess. "I don't know" was all Kevin managed to say. "Because you were drinking and got all a fortune cookie-talk on me and I guess you were turned on..."

As Kevin thought more about what had happened and what was leading up to that moment, he didn't know whether to smile or recreate the shocked expression he had as his face became red at the memories of the look in Edd's eyes and that strange allurement in his voice. Just seeing how flustered Kevin was beginning to feel remembering it, Edd began to turn red at the thought of what he could have been doing, even though he didn't even remember.

To save them both, Edd waved both hands in the air to catch Kevin's attention again and swat the thoughts out of their minds. "Um, okay," Edd searched for words that would escape both of them from bashful feelings. "Just... Just proceed to the part where it begins to involve Ed and Eddy."

"Okay." Kevin cleared his throat and took a moment to return to his story telling mood. He then suddenly added, "Just so you know, we didn't actually do anything. We've never gone as far as-"

"Okay," Edd interrupted Kevin before they both turned red again. "Please just... Continue."

* * *

Kevin gulped because at this moment, that was all he could really do. He was sitting with his back against the end of his motorcycle seat and in front of him was Edd baring his thin shoulders and collar bones and all, inching closer and closer to Kevin with a look in his eyes that told him that he was ready to eat Kevin right there.

"C'mon, Double D, if this is some weird joke, you can cut it out now." But no matter how much Kevin protested, Edd didn't stop. Edd was now a breath away from Kevin, so close to the other boy that he could see each and every freckle and trace them to form each constellation in the sky.

Edd reached for Kevin's hand, playing with the spaces between each finger again. "Why?" Edd asked. "Because you're some big macho man who only cares about getting the rock in his hand, and I'm some smart kid who needs rulers to find draw straight vectors on my graphs? Well, truth be told, the truth is being told when they say that sticks and stones may break your bones, but labels should never stop you." He brought Kevin's hand to his lips and began to plant light kisses through his messy smile. "If you are labeled one thing and fall for another of a different label, are you falling in love? Or do you believe what everyone else says and believe you're just falling in trouble? Who is to say that love should only be determined through labels? The sun hides away from the moon every night, but you can't have darkness unless you have light. There's no such thing as cold, just an absence of heat, so what if what we have is not hate, but just an absence of love? Do you want to fall in love and fill in that emptiness, or would it just end up with us falling in trouble?"

Kevin could hardly care less about what Edd was rambling on about. The rusty haired boy could feel beads of sweat begin to roll off his head as he watched in disturbing suspense as his hand was being fondled by Edd. "Double D, seriously," he was trying to make his voice deep and in control, but it was cracking with nervousness. "If you go any further, I'm going to..." he was going to say that he would punch him in the face, but remembering that Edd was probably only acting this way because he was drunk, Kevin didn't want to be responsible for any trips to the hospital. "I'm going to... I'm going to yell or something... Yeah."

With that declaration, Edd finally understood that the game began. He stopped pressing Kevin's hands to his lips and instead, this time, he took Kevin's thumb, never losing eye contact with the other boy, and parted his lips, pushing his finger further into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the tip of Kevin's thumb before sucking Kevin further into him.

"Holy shit." Kevin released in a heated breath as he could feel himself twinge. He bit on his lower lip hard to wake him up out of whatever sensation was overcoming him, and remembered what he said he would do. "HOLY SHIT," he repeated once more with a yell this time, pushing Edd away from him and trying to make more of a distance between them. "QUIT IT, DOUBLE D."

But with each push Kevin would give, Edd would just push his hands down and away until Edd managed to wrap his arms around Kevin's neck. "Why?"

Kevin tried to push Edd's arms away from him, but the other boy already had one hand wrapped around the other wrist, so pushing Edd away anymore would mean causing his motorcycle to come crashing down on the ground. "I'M NOT GOING TO STOP YELLING, DOUBLE D," Kevin really didn't know what to do at this point, but he knew that he wasn't going to back down. "THE WHOLE CUL-DE-SAC WILL HEAR US."

"Then don't stop," Edd leaned even closer to Kevin so that he could feel his words against his own skin. "Let the whole cul-de-sac hear us."

Kevin yelled. He yelled and he yelled because he knew that at this point, whatever he would say, Edd was going to twist it into another sexual innuendo. "GET OFF OF ME DOUBLE-"

The garage door suddenly opened and both Kevin and Edd's attentions were directed to it. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE?" A raging voice roared as two silhouettes appeared at the entrance. From the setting behind them, it was already night time outside and most of the other houses in the cul-de-sac only had one or two lights on. "THE WHOLE CUL-DE-SAC CAN HEAR YOU, SHOVEL-"

The silhouettes were Ed and Eddy, Eddy being the one shouting and Ed the one who managed to open the garage door with his monostrous strength, and as they stepped into the garage and into the light, Eddy stopped and held one hand up to stop Ed from stepping any further.

For what seemed like an eternity, the four were frozen in each other stares. Edd returned to looking back at Kevin who was staring at Eddy who was caught between staring at both Kevin and Edd, while Ed was too distracted at the hanging light bulb.

A gleam of a different light shined through Eddy's eyes.

"This. Is... GOLD." Instead of asking for an explanation, Eddy jumped at the situation like food for a savage. "Everybody's gotta know about how Double D's fagging Kevin up!"

_How Double D's fagging Kevin up?_ No. There was no way Kevin was going to let Eddy spread this around and ruin the image he already built at school. "Eddy, if you do that, I swear I'm going to kill you-" But as Kevin tried to get off of his motorcycle, the weight of Edd caused both of them to tumble to the floor. Kevin was trying to pry Edd off of him, but the boy held tight. When Kevin looked up, Eddy had already grabbed Ed by the ear and dragged him out of the garage, running back into the darkness.

Edd wouldn't get off of Kevin and began purring things like "Oops. Looks like we got caught." and "Come on, they're all expecting something out of us. Let's give them a show." So Kevin decided that if Edd wasn't going to get off of him, then fine. Kevin was trained in enough sports practices to deal with more weight than Edd had on his bones.

After trying to regain his balance, Kevin managed to stand back on both of his feet. Since it seemed useless to try and catch Eddy, the only thing Kevin was left to do was get rid of the boy wrapped around his neck. His garage door was now opened, making Kevin somewhat glad that they had a visit from Ed, so Kevin reached for Edd's messenger bag that was stranded on the ground and tried to make his way back outside into the fresh air.

The night was dark, making Kevin realize that he and Edd were stuck in his garage for much longer than he thought, but the stars above twinkled brightly compared to the faded street lamps of the cul-de-sac. Kevin stumbled on his feet, causing him and Edd to fall on the ground once more, but this time on his front lawn. The grass was covered with a sheet of snow that must have fallen earlier in the day, making Edd shiver and cuddle closer to Kevin. He nuzzled his nose into Kevin's neck, "It's so colddddddd."

Kevin took this opportunity to use both hands to push Edd away from him. Edd was surprised and actually let go, seeing as Kevin was now on top of him, legs on either side of him, and pushing him into the ground. Edd smiled. "Oh, Kevin. You're so hot I could-"

Edd even stopped what he was saying as he suddenly saw Kevin place his messenger bag away from them and then started taking off the sweater he was wearing. "Oh, Kevin-" He moaned, but it was now muffled as the sweater Kevin took off was now being forced over Edd's head. Kevin tried his best to put his sweater on Edd, trying to pull both of his hands through the holes of his sweater. When the sweater was finally somehow on Edd, Edd tilted his head back further into the snow and began to pucker his lips. "Kiss me, Kevin," he said, oddly finding what just happened to be incredibly romantic. "Hurry, quick!"

"I'm not going to kiss you." Kevin mumbled. He climbed off of Edd and walked to the window at the front of his house, feeling for the key hidden under the window sill. Kevin looked back and Edd hadn't even noticed that he was no longer near him, seeing as he was still laying on the ground and trying to grab for a face that wasn't there anymore and pull it towards his mouth. Kevin found the key that was taped under the window sill and used it to open the front door. He went inside, took a coat off the coat rack, put it on, and then went back outside, locking the front door and slipping the spare key in his jean pocket. "You're drunk, Double D." Kevin returned back to the other boy. "That'd be taking advantage of you."

Edd looked up and saw Kevin standing above him. He crawled back on his knees, and then almost fell backwards trying to stand up, but caught Kevin's coat sleeve before landing in the snow again. "That's okay," Edd said with a sloppy smile. "You can take advantage of me. If you were drunk, I'd probably take advantage of you." Kevin grimaced at the idea of that. "Come on, Kevin. Just one kiss?"

"No." Kevin picked Edd's messenger's bag off the ground and slung it over his shoulder. He then placed both of his hands on Edd's thin shoulders and began guiding him across the street and back to his own home. "I'm not going to kiss you."

"Please? If you kiss me, I'll kiss you back."

"Nope." When they somehow made it back to Edd's front door, Kevin opened the messenger bag and started to fish for the key, which didn't take long considering that Edd had everything label and organized. "We are going to put you to bed, and you probably aren't going to remember any of this."

As the front door was unlocked and opened, Edd practically spilled inside and Kevin had to pick him back up his feet again. "No, I'm going to remember all this and you're gonna regret not kissing me," Edd protested as he waved a limp finger in the air. "Cause I'mma keep wanting you for a kiss, but you're gonna not wanna talk to me, and then you're gonna realize that you're a big dummy and try to come back to me, but nuh-uh, mister." Kevin took one of Edd's arms and wrapped it around his own neck as the challenge of going upstairs began. "You can't just run away and think you can get me by running back. You have to win me back with something big because you know what? I deserve it."

It was easy finding Edd's room considering that, like Edd's messenger bag, everything in his house was labeled. Kevin stared at Edd, wondering if he was serious and was going to remember all this. There was a possibility. Maybe. The only way to find out was if Kevin tried keeping Edd to his word to see if he was right. And then maybe, just maybe, everything Edd said was right. Everything about not following labels and falling in love.

But for now, all Kevin wanted to do was get Edd away from him and no longer his responsibility. He opened the door to Edd's room, totally overlooking the house slippers that were beside the door and to be used by guests with dirty trackings, and dragged Edd all the way to his bed. It was a struggle to get Edd on his bed, like a wrestle that probably seemed like a romantic game of touching to Edd, but Kevin somehow managed to do it. He had to fall onto the bed himself, and then slowly pry Edd off of him. Kevin stood back up and stared at Edd who was laying on his bed. "Uhh," Kevin was beginning to feel his mind go blank as he tried to think of what to do next. "Just... Wash my clothes and give it back to me whenever you can."

He turned to walk out of Edd's room, but then turned around one last time. Maybe Edd did have a point. Maybe since they were so different from each other, with Kevin being labeled for his brawns and Edd being labeled for his brains... Maybe because of all of that, they did belong together.

"Hey, Double D..." Kevin looked at his sneakers, all wet from their tumbles through the snow. "If I did try winning, you know... Your love. And then I did kiss you, would you really kiss me back?" He looked back up at the other boy. "If we could start this all over again, do you think-"

When Kevin looked back at Edd, he found Edd beginning to slip out of his pants. Edd tossed his pants off his bed, sprawled his limbs across the bed, grabbed his pillow to cover his face, and then his body remained still as he went to sleep. The sight and everything that just happened made Kevin want to laugh. _What a dork_, he thought, and then closed the door behind him as he left.

* * *

"But you didn't kiss him?!"

Despite the cold climate, ice cream was dripping down from the seven scoops on Jimmy's cone and down on his fingers. He was sitting on the curb outside the ice cream shop beside Kevin, who was biting into the chocolate shell of his ice cream bar, and on Kevin's other side was Edd, who preferred not to have any ice cream at all. The story Kevin was telling had continued through Jimmy's return to Kevin's garage and continued during the walk to the ice cream shop and finally ended as they were enjoying their ice cream during the wintertime on the curb of the street. Jimmy stood up from where he was sitting, somehow managing to not let any of his scoops fall off, as he was upset from the ending of Kevin's story. "Why didn't you kiss him?"

"Because Jimmy," Kevin was going to re-explain not wanting to take advantage of a drunk Edd, and how he liked their first kiss at Edd's house when they were suppose to watch movies anyways, but then Kevin opted for the easier reply: "Shut up."

Edd tapped on the bottom of his chin with his index finger as connections began to form in his head. "That would make sense now..." He muttered his thinking process to himself, but Jimmy sat back down as both he and Kevin looked in his direction to listen. "What gave Eddy the motivation to do the vandalism and not Kevin, why Kevin would assumed I did remember everything that happened that night... Because I stated I would and practically did everything that I predicted, causing Kevin to be mislead greatly..." Edd looked up as his eyes lit up with new theories. "Perhaps that was my id surfacing and controlling my consciousness? If we're following Freudian belief, then that would make sense as to why my libido suddenly had complete control of my instincts. 'We are, after all, social creatures and sex is the most social of needs.' ..."

Kevin looked back at Jimmy who could only shrug his shoulders, both needing a translation to this separate language Edd was speaking. Jimmy suggested, "I think what he's trying to say is that he wants to be with you again?"

Kevin looked back at Edd. When Edd finally realized that he was being stared at and expected to say something, Edd waved the thoughts out of his head. He stood up and cleared his throat. "Thank you, Kevin," and then turned around and began to walk back home.

"... What?" Kevin stood up from the curb and shouted back at Edd, "Hey now. Wait!" When Edd turned back around to face Kevin, Kevin could only stare back at him with a dumbfounded expression. "That's... It?"

Edd stared back at Kevin.

"Yes."

And before he or Kevin could say anything else, Edd turned around and walked back home with a quicker pace.

Kevin stayed standing there for what seemed to be the longest time because unlike the other times when Edd actually wanted to escape his conversation with Kevin, Edd's front door wasn't there for Kevin to keep open this time. He turned back around and looked at Jimmy, who was still licking the ice cream off his cone, to see if he had also witnessed what just happened. Jimmy stared back at him with wide eyes, the same expression he had on his face when he watched his soap operas on tv at home. "Did you see-" Jimmy nodded. "Did he just-" Jimmy nodded. "I thought I just-" Jimmy nodded.

Kevin slowly began to shake his head left and right as he decided this was not how it was going to end. "This isn't over." He said with a mixture of rage and determination. "We have suffered through eight chapters too long and an unnecessary hiatus to think that this is how this is going to end."

From the excitement, Jimmy stood up from his seat in the curb and said, "But Kevin! Doesn't breaking the fourth wall at least require some form of wit and appropriate timing so the readers don't think this is a lame way to make them laugh?"

"Not when the next chapter is my last chapter to make things right."

Kevin began to walk back home, with Jimmy following after him, contemplating how to change things before it was too late.


	9. Nine Texts Are All That Is Needed

The only light visible in Kevin's room was the light coming from his tv screen as he watched Rod enter his younger brother's room and apologized, beginning a strange yet catchy collage of the brothers repeating "cool beans" over and over again like some underground track.

This is what defeat looked like. Sprawled across an unmade bed with the lights off, windows closed, and even his most favorite movie playing but ignored because there seemed to be something more fascinating in the white nothingness of his ceiling. It was Saturday night, near the end of a week filled with an endless game of playing cat and mouse with Edd. Because every time Kevin would try to have a word with Edd, or even try to exchange a glance with Edd, the other boy would run down the street or speed across the school hallway. Kevin just wanted to talk to Edd again, to make amends and return to falling in love. Maybe it was really Edd this entire time who was afraid of falling in trouble. But even then, Kevin couldn't help but think, didn't Edd like all the times they would spend making out? Because Kevin sure as heck did and that was enough reason for them to stay together.

Inside his pants pocket, Kevin's cell phone vibrated. He took it out and saw its screen notify him that he had a new text message from Nazz. It read:

"_Kev! I cant find you are you at WF?_"

Winter Formal was that night and Kevin didn't even care because he was tired of chasing Edd ever since the day he turned away from him. It was like everywhere Kevin expected Edd to be, the other boy was one step ahead and hiding at the other side of the building. Why did Kevin have to fall for someone so smart?

His phone buzzed again with another text from Nazz:

"_Cmon Kev! Have at least one dance with a friend youve loved since 5eva?_"

Kevin tossed his phone off his bed and on his bedroom floor. Winter Formal was the last thing he could care about at the moment, especially when all it ended up doing was reminding him of who he care about most. A wave of over dramatic teen angst washed over Kevin as he thought about how much time and effort was wasted trying to ask Edd out to Winter Formal. If Edd hadn't managed to follow exactly what his drunk self said, then maybe Kevin would have known better than to try to win the love of a boy with something big and chasing him everywhere. If Kevin knew, he wouldn't have tried. But also if Kevin knew, he wouldn't have fallen. And Kevin liked knowing that the person he was falling for was Edd. Even when Edd was drunk, everything he said all seemed so right. Why did Kevin have to fall for someone so smart?

Suddenly, the ground began to shake. Kevin hung his head off the edge of his bed and saw his phone's screen light up and vibrating rapidly to an influx of text messages. "God. Just shut up, Nazz!" Kevin grumbled as he rolled back onto his bed and smothered his own face under his pillow. But no matter how much air he was preventing himself from breathing in, the muffled sound of his phone vibrating across the floor could be head. Kevin took the pillow off his head and sat up. He didn't understand why someone needed to be texting him that much under one minute, but he knew he shouldn't be directing all of his frustration towards one friend who didn't even do anything to him.

He crawled back to the edge of his bed and stretched his arm and fingers until he could reach his phone. As expected, all of the text messages received were from Nazz:

"_I say 5eva cause its longer than 4eva! XP_"

"_Are you hiding near the punch bowl again?!_"

"_I hope you got that the freind I was talkin about was double d_"

"_I think ed and eddy dragged him along? Better to go stag together than go stag stag?_"

"_Poor double d. He doesnt look like hes havin much fun. :'(_"

"_Its youre chance Kev! Swoop down and gET A PIECE OF DAT!_"

"_Dude! I just requested that one song we tried learnin when we were tryin to make a band. Rember it? Dance with double d all night, but save one dance for lil ol me :D?_"

Kevin stopped looking at the rest of the texts Nazz had sent him. Edd was at the Winter Formal?

He jumped off his bed, opened his closet door, grabbed whatever sweater was within his grasp, and began running out of his house. His motorcycle was still in the shop and he didn't bother trying to figure out what buses would take him towards the school. All Kevin knew was that he just had to run, performing Olympic skills as he pulled his sweater over his head and dodged any oncoming cars from getting hit by them. The night was cold and the air was brisk. For the first time Kevin had noticed, the sky seemed to be filled with stars that were shining with support, like cheers from an audience at the sidelines of one of his games. As Kevin kept running, he could feel the cold cutting into his face and when he looked down, he realized that the sweater he grabbed was the one he wore when he watched movies at Edd's house for the first time and Edd stretched a hole with his thin fingers.

The stars above him were aligned to form different constellations, but there were two stars across from each other in that night sky, not forming any constellation with any others but simply connected to one another.

* * *

The students around were scattered to form different groups, but there was a single student between follies in the form of tall and forgiving and the other shorter and still yet to forgive, not forming any group with any others but simply standing among them in an isolation that happened to be surrounded.

It was just like every other dance he had been going to since junior high, minus the anxiety attacks that began the first few he attended. Edd was standing beside the wall that was the backdrop for one of the dj's speakers, his back straight and arms folded across his chest. He had been dragged along to this dance by an over rambunctious Eddy who donned his hair slicked back with an unnatural shine and amount of hair gel as his eyes watched the dance floor before him, looking for another single visitor that he could grab and dance with, but always backing out right after verbally announcing he would. Nearby was Ed with his hair neatly combed to the side and a starchy suit confining his limbs from making any comfortable movements, having been dressed by his mother this time because it was a chance to make sure that Ed took a bath and prove that he could wear something formally, and as years have shown, there was no way of denying a mother's wishes when it came to Ed.

Edd shifted the weight in his stance. It was hard to recognize the other faces in the gym since the regular lights were off and the only lights came from the dance floor lights, but he couldn't help but feel as the people around him would every now and then glance at him, making Edd feel uncomfortable and as though they were just waiting for him to do something. To keep his mind off of the possible faces, Edd looked back at Eddy. Eddy was wearing another outfit he probably took from his older brothers closet since it was too large and unfit at certain parts, but Edd knew how important it was to Eddy to be able to match up to his older brother, so Edd didn't say anything about that. Instead he said, "The dance floor won't dance to you, Eddy. You have to have to dance if you wish to enter the dance floor!"

Eddy turned around and stared at Edd. "WHAT?"

The speaker near Edd was blaring loudly with remixes of top forty tracks, so Edd stopped standing against the wall and leaned closer to Eddy, "The dance floor won't dance to you, Eddy! You have to dance-"

"WHAT?" Eddy whipped his attention toward Ed, who was trying to stretch his tuxedo collar away from his neck so he had room to breathe. "WHAT WAS THE FAG SAYING?"

Edd stopped crossing his arms across his chest and heavily placed them on his hips. "Eddy! You must cease addressing me as-"

"I THINK WHAT DOUBLE D SAID," Ed's voice overpowered Edd's as he answered Eddy. "WAS THAT HE WOULDN'T CONSIDER JONAH A ROLE MODEL!"

"No! What?! I didn't say-"

"WHAT?" Eddy, getting fed up with the entire conversation, grabbed his friends by their coat sleeves and dragged them towards the punch bowl across the room and away from the speakers. He looked back at Edd. "What did you say?!"

Edd planted both feet on the ground. "I said that-"

"Double D!"

Both Edd and Eddy turned to the side, managing to hear the sound of a friend approaching over the music of the dance, and found Nazz. Her blonde hair cascaded into waves in their short length and her dress swayed as she squeezed through the dance floor and made her way to the Eds. At the sight of Ed and Eddy, she gave a friendly wave hello and then returned her attention back at Edd. "Yo, Double D! I hope you don't mind but I just texted Kevin that you have to let me have at least one dance with him. Of course, that also means I gotta have at least one dance with you-

"Kevin's here?" Although Edd knew it was rude to cut someone off in the middle of what they were saying, his mind began running towards places he was trying to avoid. "Kevin's here? At this dance? Right now?"

Nazz put both hands around the frame of her red lips so that her voice would become louder than the noise around them. "Isn't he? I thought he would be here with you! I've been looking for him all ni-"

"HOLD UP!" Eddy entered the conversation and pushed Edd away from Nazz. Even though he was still shorter than both of them, pushing Edd away was easy for anybody. "This is not happening again! You came here with your friends, Double D, and if we don't have dates, then neither do you!"

"Excuse me?" Edd could feel the rage inside of him beginning to boil and turn his face red. "Do I need to remind you that I was the only one of us who had a date because I had the honor of being asked by somebody. And what did you do? You just continued utilizing derogatory nomenclature to your own friend when you could have been using that time actually proposing someone you wished to escort to Winter Formal to like a decent human being would have!"

As the heat of the words being thrown at each other like knifes began to sharpen and burn, Nazz took a step back. Her eyes widened and she bit her bottom lip, uncomfortable and unsure of where to escape. Normally she would take the role of trying to break up fights, as she has grown to naturally try and do since they were young, but another part of her understood that perhaps leaving Edd and Eddy to work out their argument their own way was probably the best thing to do. Nazz took a glance at Ed who was trying his best to loosen his bow tie. It seemed like none of them would even notice if she stepped away, so she slowly made her exit before heading back to the dance floor.

Because of his height, Edd was able to tower over Eddy and pour down his anger in bucket loads. "I cannot even comprehend why you chose to become a bane to the formation of a relationship with someone who was so nonpareil to me!" Edd continued, his voice becoming scratchy from yelling but still not louder than the dance music. "In fact, at this point, I'm beginning to wonder if all this is just an outward displacement towards homosexuals! Are you really as much of a bigot as your actions project you to be, or are you just unacceptable to desires that are actually of your own? Because I have always known you to be extremely shallow and boorish, but this... This profuse ignorance you are emitting is getting extremely out of hand and there has to be a reason for it!"

Eddy stared directly at Edd in the eyes for a long moment, trying to understand the wave of dialogue being pushed against him. He gave up and yelled back, "NOTHING YOU ARE SAYING IS MAKING SENSE."

"Eddy," Edd took a deep breath and mentally closed the thesaurus hidden in the back of his head. "Why are you doing this? Why did you do all this? Why would you hurt someone who has been nothing but your friend since the beginning? Are you really only acting this way because it's something your older brother would do?"

The mention of his older brother made Eddy furrow his eyebrows and look away. Edd saw this and then continued, "Eddy, you have to stop this reaction formation, this 'believing the opposite' you have of your older brother. We've all met him and we all know how rude he can be, and especially to you. Why do you want to become like that? You can be so much more-"

"So what, Double D?" Eddy crossed his arms, but he still couldn't look at Edd anymore. "Just because you're in love and you think you have someone who loves you back and will never leave you, you think you're better than the rest of us?"

Inside the school gym, the music continued playing and clouded the rest of the students with a sense of oblivion towards the conversation happening near the punch bowl.

Edd was beginning to finally understand what this was all about. "Eddy, please," he repeated. "Please listen, because I am speaking to you as a friend, as even a brother, and I wouldn't be telling you what I'm about to say if I was anything else: I will never leave you. You and I have been friends that have been invested in each other for far too long. I've sacrificed an entire relationship I could have had, just to stay friends with you and Ed. We will always be friends and Ed and I will never leave you."

"Yeah?" Eddy stared back at Edd. "How do we know that you aren't just saying that? You're different now, Double D. Everything's been different ever since that day we caught you screwing around with Kevin. And things don't change unless the people do."

"You just have to try and understand for once," Edd stared back at Eddy. "Because if you don't change yourself, then everything else may stay the same for the worse."

"Whatever."

Eddy turned around and began to walk away. He walked past Ed, who finally stopped fiddling around with his bow tie and looked up. Ed looked at Eddy, and then at Edd, and then back at Eddy, and then at Edd. "You are very loved, Double D," he said as he had once before. "Double D, you are very loved."

If it was anyone else, a heavy sense of sarcasm and hostility could have fueled those words. But because it was Ed and the look he exchanged with Edd said so much more than those twelve words, Edd could feel a sigh of relief lifting off his chest. Even though Ed never seemed to have any logic, he had a sense of reality towards his friends that Edd could always tell. Ed said what could have been the most responsible thing Edd ever heard him say, besides dealing with Sarah, in that lovable oaf manner that is only known for because of Ed, "I will come around and get Eddy. If not, Eddy will come around and finally get it."

Edd nodded before Ed also turned and began to walk away towards the direction Eddy was last seen going. Even though there was hardly an resolution, there was a feeling of conclusion that he was satisfied with for the moment. Edd walked to the punch bowl and grabbed himself a cup, gulping down his thoughts and concerns.

But right when he thought it was over, the crowd of students near the gym's entrance turned and looked over their shoulders, almost in a cascading effect, and they began to move away from the doors and made a pathway to the center. As the crowd move away from the entrance, like curtains opening to a show, the dancing slowly began to reach a halt. The sound of dancing bodies and heels on polished floors grew quieter and quieter, until a familiar voice finally shouted:

"MOVE."

The sound continued falling into a decrescendo.

"MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!"

The mass of people began to pull away. The dj even stopped playing music when he began to wonder why everyone had simply just stopped.

"HOW AM I SUPPOSE TO BE WITH EDD AT WINTER FORMAL IF YOU'RE ALL IN MY WAY?"

Edd put his cup down and walked toward the source of the voice. He pushed past bodies and then there, in the middle of the gym floor with a crowd around him like a performer on a theatre in the round, was the brash, yet extremely conventional, athlete in a crew neck sweater with a tacky knitted pattern and a ripped hole that was all too familiar to Edd.

"Kevin?"

The sound of Edd's feeble voice was enough to make all attention fall on him. Everybody who was standing near Edd took several steps back so there was no one blocking the way to Edd from Kevin. And that was when Edd understood that all those times he felt as though everyone was watching him and expecting him to do something for them was actually for this single moment.

"Double D, I just-" The look in Kevin's face made Edd understand that Kevin also felt the pressure of everyone else watching. Kevin, who had always tried to keep his cool and not ruin the status he had already built up so high at school, began to realize how much attention he was getting doing something so unusual in front of his classmates, and was suddenly becoming anxious. "I just..." He looked to his side, but the faces around him were just blurs ready to judge him. "Sorry, Double D. I just ran in here, and you don't even want me here in the first place. Sorry for just going in here like this, I just, I don't know, you were probably having fun without me, and then I just-"

"No, no! It's fine, Kevin!" Edd lifted both hands to try and calm Kevin. The truth was that Kevin had never said anything so wrong in his life.

Kevin stared back at Edd. He stared at Edd and only at Edd. And he didn't need anything else to push him to actually do something.

"Look. Double D," Kevin took a deep breath because even though he had it all in him to say it, he was still in the midst of trying to figure out what he was going to say. "I'm sorry for being an asshole and not understanding how much your friends mean to you. Really. But I can work with that, I get that they're important to you, but you know what, you're really important to me and I, I just don't like not being with you. So can't we just, you know, work something out so that you can still be with your friends, but I can still be with you? Because it doesn't have to be one or the other, it's possible to have both, if we just work it out," The words were coming out in strangled clauses, but Edd listened wide eyed and nodded with each stumble he heard. "And I know it'll work out because, like you said, I'm just the brawns and you're the brains, and things will just work out just because. You're the smart one, Double D, and I need you because everything you say it right. Look at me. I am just the dummy, I'm the dummy who's running back to you and will keep running back to you and trying to win you over with something big, like this, and-"

Edd just couldn't stand hearing Kevin ramble on at this point. He stepped forward, grasping the collar of Kevin's sweater, and pulled him close until he could feel the tenderness of his lips against his. It was warm and welcoming, a familiar smile of spontaneous love erupting within their mouths.

When they pulled apart, Kevin looked into Edd's eyes, a wave of confusion beginning to wash over his expression. "I thought you said I kiss you, and then you kiss me back..?"

"Just because I'm smart, doesn't mean that everything I say is correct." It was something Edd never expected himself to say, but it felt right. Things felt like they were beginning to change. "Let's just say this is us starting all over again."

"So we're all good now?"

Edd nodded and Kevin pulled him into a hug, burying his face in the crevice of Edd's neck. They had forgotten where they were for that moment until they could hear a squeal of glee from within the crowd, perhaps from Nazz as she watched her favorite friends making up. The dj finally continued to play another track and the students began to disperse, gradually dancing once again and forgetting about the entire scene that just happened before them. Kevin still kept Edd within his arms.

"Cool beans."

"What?" Edd pulled away, unsure of what he heard was what he heard because of the dance music playing.

"I mean-" Kevin looked away, wondering what made him expect Edd to repeat the same two words with him until they created some catchy underground-like track. "I'll tell you later."

They stared at each other, and smiled, and simply captured the moment.

"No, wait," Of course, Kevin let go of Edd and took a step back. "I have one little thing to ask you to do."

* * *

If you walk down the halls of Peach Creek High School, you will eventually find a locker where a new beginning waited for a student, whether it be the day he found the word "FAG" vandalized across his locker or the day he found a redheaded boy waiting with a bouquet of roses for him is up to you to decide. But during the night of the Winter Formal dance, if you head down to the locker just a few doors down, you will find a blue haired vixen with one hand on her hip and the other shaking a can of spray paint.

The color of the paint was red and although she would have gone with a trademark blue that matched her hair and eye shadow, the color of the red matched the color of her nails and the color she smeared on her lips and it would get the right kind of attention she expected to receive. She took the cap off the spray paint can with just her thumb nail and then began spraying lines that formed letters on the locker.

"Suspended for a week for wrecking the library yet got away from wrecking my ride, banned from attending the Winter Formal, and where do I manage to find you?" A voice spoke from the end of the hall, approaching the vandalism in the work. "Of course, putting graffiti on Eddy's locker. Can't expect any less from you, Marie."

Marie stopped spray painting and turned her head, finding Kevin standing beside her with both hands in his back jean pockets, admiring her work in progress. She squinted her eye at him. "It's called getting revenge for my boyfriend. You know, something you've failed to do these past weeks."

"I don't know." Kevin kept focusing on trying to figure out what she was putting on Eddy's locker, only making out the words 'small' and 'pen' sprayed on so far. "I still woulda gone with writing something more creative..."

"Like what?" Marie snarled at him. "'Dork'?"

"How about 'dweeb'?" He immediately replied back with a smug expression on his face.

"Quit it, Kevin." Marie bent down and picked the spray can cap off the ground and put it back on. "You already won the war, you won Double D, and you won the happy ending. What else do you want?"

Kevin shrugged. "I don't know. I'm in the hallway, not at the school dance, no where near the gym, and there's this really cute sock head wanting to dance with somebody but there isn't anyone near him for him to dance with... Anyone good enough for him and wouldn't care entering a dance they're banned from, I mean."

She didn't get it at first, but then there was a sudden gleam in her eyes, and then it disappeared as she automatically suspected strings to be attached. "Why?"

He laughed. "Because, Marie," Kevin took his hands out of his back pockets and just answered as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, "You and I are a lot more alike than you think. I'm just a dumb guy who likes to let my enemies win in the war, too, even for just a little."

Marie smirked at this and repeated, "You and I are a lot more alike than you think." She tossed the can of spray paint to Kevin and he caught it with both hands. "So while I'm dancing with my boyfriend and you decide you get bored outside in the hallway by yourself, you won't go back into the gym and get pissed off in jealousy and wreck the entire building when you see us dancing together?"

"Nope," Kevin tossed the can from hand to hand. "Well, if I do get bored, I still owe Nazz a dance, so I'd be preoccupied for a while." He then added, "I'm only giving you two songs, though."

Marie smile and turned around, walking out into the hallway and towards the gym. Without even looking back, she rose one hand in the air and flicked her wrist in a wave goodbye. "I've always liked a cheater."

Kevin watched as she kept walking, taking her last sentence as her way of expressing gratitude and nothing more. He looked back at the locker, knowing that he promised he'd work out the way he acted around Ed and Eddy for Edd, but Marie was right to some extent. It wouldn't hurt helping her finish her work and get a little revenge. He took the cap off the can of spray paint and wrote the remaining, 'is' in Marie's message on Eddy's locker.

He then took a step back and looked at what he had just done, expecting himself to admire it, but there just still wasn't anything right about it after everything that just happened that night. Kevin, knowing that there was something that had to be changed and it was him who had to change it, spray painted more on Eddy's locker and changed to message from 'small penis' to:

'a small pen is still mightier than any sword'

* * *

Outside the world seemed silent, with only the sound of fallen snow and music muffled by the gym walls. The moon was out, but only enough for it to be peeking behind some clouds. Sitting on the bench behind the gym was Edd and Kevin, beside each other and huddled from the cold as Kevin hummed the tune of another song that Edd had never heard of.

The two had escaped the dance during one of the raunchier songs, slipping past all of the grinding bodies and sweat that was making Edd feel a little more paranoid than normal, and had been spending the rest of the night outside in the enjoyment of their own solitude.

"So, is this really it?" Kevin questioned his own state of bliss.

Edd shrugged one shoulder. "Perhaps," he answered. "Who is there to say? Well, at least we know that what ever happens, we'll just-"

Kevin's cell phone suddenly rang. His jean pocket lit up and began to vibrate and play the verse of some uncensored rap song. He stood up, gave an apologetic look towards Edd, and then took his phone out and answered it.

He mumbled some words into the other line, even chuckled a few times, slowly drifting away from Edd and the bench and leaving behind foot steps in the snow, before hanging up and then turning back around to face Edd. Edd waited for Kevin to explain.

"It was nothing, really," Kevin put his phone back in his pocket. "You know that shop I left my ride in to get fixed? They just called and said they finally finished, free wax and polish since it took them so long. The shop was suppose to close an hour ago, but since they were working so hard tonight, they said they were willing to wait if I wanted to go pick it up right now-"

"So why don't we?"

Kevin stared at Edd. He shrugged. And then waited for Edd to convince him, even though Kevin was already ready to do whatever Edd suggested them doing.

Edd stood up from the bench and patted the snow off his clothes. "We can go retrieve your motorcycle. It'll be a far trek, but once we've arrived there, you would be able to return us back." He walked towards Kevin and once he was in reach, Edd held one of Kevin's hands and used his other hand to trace circles on the area where he would feel Kevin's heart beating. "Then perhaps you can take us back to my house, where my parents have taken another absence, and we can inspect if they really have repaired your motorcycle, to see how well your motors are still running..."

Kevin stared at Edd. "Double D, quit shitting me."

Edd laughed. Kevin did, too.

Edd lifted his hand off of Kevin. He held on tight to Kevin's hand as they began walking away from school and into the darkness of the night, knowing that which ever direction they would take, they were at least together and that was something they couldn't have asked more of.

**END.**


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